Oct 18, 20232 min read

Are you getting enough vegetables in your day?

Vegetables are a great source of vitamins and minerals which are important for healthy eating. These include vitamin C, vitamin A, iron, folate, magnesium and calcium, water and fibre.

By having adequate serving of vegetables every day, this reduces the risk of conditions such as coronary heart disease, stroke and weight gain. Unfortunately, only 8.7% of Australian adults are having enough vegetables in their diet.

There may be several reasons as to why vegetable consumption is low such as due to taste, texture, colour, smell or perhaps you may not realise you need more vegetables in your diet! We should be aiming to eat 5 serves of vegetables a day. And while this may sound easy for some, for a lot of people this can be quite challenging.

How big is a serve of vegetables?

A standard serve of vegetables is about 75g. Depending on the vegetable, 75g can seem like large amount or little amount of a single vegetable. To help visualize what 75g may look like, here are a few examples.

½ cup of green vegetables
½ cup of legumes, beans and peas
1 cup of leafy greens
½ cup of sweet corn
½ medium potato
1 medium tomato

What are the recommended Serves of Vegetables per day?

Check out below to see if you are meeting your recommended serves of vegetables per day according to your age group.

	19-50 years	51-70 years	70+ years
Men	6 serves per day	5 ½ serves per day	5 serves per day
Women	5 serves per day	5 serves per day	5 serves per day

Everyday I’m Brusselin…

Tips to include more veggies in your diet.

Some is better than none, but let’s try for 5 vegetables a day. Here are 6 easy ways to include more vegetables during the day:

Add minced vegetables into meatballs, nuggets, meat patties, sauces, and pastries.
Cook tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach with scrambled eggs
Bake savoury muffins with vegetables such as tomato, zucchini, corn and peas
Mash cauliflower and potato together
Include lentils and spinach into spaghetti or lasagna
Cook rice with black beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas

Watch this video from our Dietitians

See our top tips on including more vegetables for adults from our team of Dietitians in this video:

Every veg counts!

Here’s an example of what a full day of vegetable servings look like for an adult (19-50 years old):

Breakfast. 1 slice of toast, with ½ medium tomato, ¼ cup mushrooms, ¼ cup baked beans (1 serve)
Morning Tea. 1 slice of Kidney bean brownie (0.5 serve)
Lunch. Chow Mein noodles, beef, 1 cup stir fry vegetables such as carrots and broccoli (2 serves)
Afternoon Tea. 1 savoury muffin with tomato, carrots, zucchini (0.5 serve)
Dinner. Braised beef, ¼ cup mash potato, ¼ cup mash cauliflower, ½ cup peas (2 serves)

Total vegetable serves for the day: 6