Thursday 5 March 2009

Getting my five a day is killing me.

According to the producers of strawberries it takes ten strawberries to make up one of your five a day. That’s fifty strawberries a day to stay healthy. I’m thinking that’s a recipe for the runs. Of course you wouldn’t eat fifty, in fact you can barely eat ten without thinking it’s going to influence things a little bit too much in the downstairs area. So who makes this up? Who decides how many strawberries constitutes 1 of your 5 a day? And what of salad? Who’s measuring the salad?

The NHS Five a Day website says one portion consists of:
‘Small-sized fruit: 2 or more, for example 2 plums, 2 satsumas, 3 apricots, 2 kiwi fruit, 7 strawberries, 14 cherries, 6 lychees.’

So might I suggest the strawberry producers are lying through their teeth and in fact seven average size strawberries constitutes 1 of your 5 a day. But what has all this got to do with finding work you ask, you’re an idiot going on about fruit when you should be looking for a job! Well, one thing I have conspicuously failed to mention in this blog so far is money, cold hard cash, or more likely the lack of it.

Ok so strawberries are out of season and are flown in from Spain which makes them more expensive and carbon unfriendly. However shopping for the money conscious centres around frozen food that uses poor quality fish and battery farmed chicken in some sort of crispy batter, not berries and vegetables. It’s white bread not seeded granary loaves. And it’s crisps and snacks at low, low prices, bottles of coke for a pound, Cadbury’s fingers for 89p. Is this because when you’re out of work you want to comfort eat and the supermarkets are catering for what people want as opposed to what they should have? Or is it because the frozen crap is so damned cheap anyway that they can lop off 50% of the price and still make a large profit? Probably both.

So my beef steak tomato is this, how can I afford my five a day on a budget, especially when the producers of such goods are lying to me, encouraging me to eat more of it than I need to. Oh and potatoes don’t count. Wait a second, isn’t this what, Jamie Nakedchef was telling everyone a while back, well done mate, big success. Not. Getting my five a day on a budget is killing me.

http://www.5aday.nhs.uk/topTips/default.html

1 comment:

  1. There are some really cheap fruit and veg stalls on Wood Green high street - £1 for more bananas than anyone could reasonably eat in a week. There's a decent fishmonger too!

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