Half of Britons eat two or fewer portions of vegetables each day, while others count chocolate, cheese and meat towards their recommended daily intake, according to new research.
Ten per cent of adults surveyed confessed to eating fewer vegetables than they did as a child, according to a study by Birds Eye.
The research showed men were the worst offenders, consuming on average 2.4 portions of vegetables a day, compared to the 2.7 portions eaten by women.
One in seven said they did not eat the recommended quantity of vegetables because they struggled to find exciting ways to cook them, while one-quarter avoided vegetables because they did not know how to cook them at all.
Almost one in four said they avoided buying vegetables due to their shelf life, while 11 per cent of those polled were put off eating their greens because of childhood traumas and bad memories of school dinners.
The Vege-nation survey of 1,000 Britons found four per cent believe pasta and cereal make up one of the recommended five daily portions of fruit and vegetables.
Others said they thought Turkish delight, liver and cottage cheese all counted towards the intake.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article