Answers to 3 questions about fruit and vegetables

• Posted on 12 February 2020
• By Rosanne

How many fruits and vegetables should a child eat every day? Are there fruits and vegetables that are not as healthy for you? What if your child wants to eat a punnet of strawberries a day, should you sometimes say no?

Fruit and vegetables are healthy for you. That has become an undeniable fact. But we are still not entirely sure about the different nutritional values and amounts. We've answered 3 important questions about fruit and vegetables for you.

How much is enough?

The Council of Health recommends that adults should eat 200 grams of vegetables and 200 grams of fruit each day. For children, we advise the following:

Table 1 Amount of vegetables per day per age group (Centre for Food, following the Good Nutrition Guidelines 2015 by the Council of Health)

Table 2 Amount of vegetables per day per age group (Centre for Food, following the Good Nutrition Guidelines 2015 by the Council of Health)

Are there fruits and vegetables that are not as healthy for you? 

Every fruit and vegetable has different properties. They have different colours, textures and scents. This can tell you that there is also a large variety in the vitamins, minerals and bioactive substances they contain. 

It's a good idea to have a lot of variety in your diet. It's also important to know that a piece of fruit or a vegetable, for example a tomato, is used by our bodies in a different way when it's raw compared to when it's cooked. This is because some substances disappear or change when they are heated, so our bodies can no longer absorb them. But on the other hand, different substances also become available. So try to have plenty of variation in this as well.

Can you give a child too much fruit and vegetables?

It's practically impossible to give a child too many vegetables, but you can give them too much fruit. That's because they are full of sugars. The World Health Organization (WHO) advises that the maximum of your daily energy should come from no more than 10% from sugars, but 5% is even better. 

A gram of sugar contains 4 kilocalories. An adult woman who consumes 2000 kilocalories a day, should eat 50 grams of sugar at the most, but a maximum of 25 grams would be better. A four-year-old girl eats around 1450 kilocalories a day, so that means 39 grams and 19 grams of sugar respectively. A ten-year-old boy consumes about 2110 kilocalories, which means 53 grams and 2 grams of sugar respectively (Human energy requirements Report of a Joint FAO/WHO/UNU Expert Consultation).

So how much sugar is in fruit? The following table will give you an overview:

Table 3 Amount of sugar per fruit type (NEVO-online)

Don't forget that sugars in fruits are natural sugars and are accompanied by vitamins, minerals, bioactive substances and fibres. The sugar content of a piece of fruit is not as important as the valuable nutrients it contains.