Five a day ‘is not enough’

People should be told to include eight portions of fruit and vegetables in their diet each day, not just five, a nutrition expert has claimed.

Yvonne Bishop-Weston, nutrition consultant at Foods For Life, said that government guidelines on how many portions of these foods people should consume in order to fight off disease lack evidence and are, therefore, confusing.

"We just don't think that five a day is enough to protect against the onslaught of toxicity we have from the modern environment," she said.

Ms Bishop-Weston went on to say that the nutrient levels from this amount of healthy produce is also not enough to "protect against the high stress levels we have [and] that our bodies are simply not designed for".

Her comments follow the recent publication of a review in the British Journal of Cancer, which shows that eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day does not keep cancer at bay.

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