Ten A Day, The Sexy Way

Most people are familiar with the FDA's Five A Day campaign, which encourages Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables.  Maybe you have a haute couture designer Five A Day tee shirt, or you remember your parents telling you to "eat your colors" at dinner.  Well it's time to bid farewell to that sunny little logo, because after fifteen years, The FDA is replacing Five A Day with a new campaign called More Matters.

More Matters takes a personalized approach to determining how many servings of fruits and vegetables a person needs in a day, considering factors like age, gender and level of activity.  For most people, the magic number is still five. But here is an interesting and underreported detail of the new system:

The term "serving" appears to be phased out almost entirely.  Under the old system, a serving was defined as 1/2 cup of cooked or raw vegetables, or 1 cup of leafy greens.  More Matters is now using the more accessible "cups" to refer to how much plant matter we need to consume in a day.  The problem is, they make no mention of doubling their own prior recommendation.  A half cup of broccoli used to count as one fifth of your Daily Recommended Intake (DRI).  Now it's only one tenth.  I applaud their recognition that "fruits and vegetables are the foods that should be eaten most often."  But they are too quiet about upping the ante.

The FDA's reticence to proclaim their own heightened standards, combined with their assurance that canned counts (Does it? Niblets?), makes me suspect that are sugar-coating (pun!) the cold, raw, vegetable truth.  Are they afraid of intimidating those of us who are insouciantly mowing down donut holes for breakfast?  Are they afraid of being the hottest girl at the dance?

I propose Shock and Awe, FDA.  It may have no place in international relations, but on the home front, in the home front of all home fronts, our American bodies, we need to be more aggressive about changing our habits if we are to reverse what health experts are calling a national catastrophe.

It couldn't hurt if we put a government team of illustrators together to draw sexy vegetable people like the Danes.  It appears they advocate six servings per day.  I wonder what their serving size is.  In inches.