A veg (or five) too far: why 10 portions a day is way too much to ask | Kathleen Kerridge

Government guidelines have, for some years, held that eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is what we should all be aiming for. That’s an achievable target for many, if not most, of us. Some days it might be felt in the purse, to make sure there’s broccoli on a plate, but generally it’s possible to eat five different fruits and vegetables a day even on a strict budget.

Ten, though? When I first read that the guidelines could change, and we should be aiming for 10 portions of fruit and veg a day, I nodded and thought: “Huh, makes sense.” But as I thought about it, while raiding my freezer for a bag of frozen carrots, I realised it was going to be another thing – like buying free range organic, or only buying ethically sound clothing – that will only serve to make the poor feel guilty, again less than good enough.

Most days my family consumes five a day with ease. The veg is in my budget, and there’s always a bag of bananas or satsumas around. I buy frozen vegetables and fresh fruit, and they get vacuumed up by the family as fast as I can serve them. To serve and supply double this, though? When vegetables are sold in 900g bags for the most part, and each member of the family should be having 10 portions a day at 80g a portion – they can’t be the same fruit or vegetable –then for families already struggling, this extra recommendation seems impossible.

Already millions are feeling the pinch of extended austerity. Finding a fiver for the electric meter, or making sure there’s food on the table at all, is a common battle across the country. It’s not unusual for thousands of children to go to school hungry, having not eaten breakfast because the cupboards were bare at home.

Food banks are having a hard time keeping up with the families who, after paying their rent, have no money left for groceries. People who have no real cooking facilities, often relying on a “worktop oven” or a microwave to see them through, will have good reason to roll their eyes and ignore this advice. For some, it’s not even worth aiming for. It’s impossible to afford it, let alone cook it.

‘Just adding half a frozen bag of greens to a meal for four people will cost an extra 50p. And that’s just one portion of veg at dinner.’ Photograph: Garry Weaser for the Guardian

When there is so much disparity in income in this country, and when so many are fighting to live from payday to payday, as Sure Start centres fade into memory, taking food education and their healthy eating plans with them, and school dinners rise in cost, it seems shortsighted to interfere more in what people are putting on their plates. Maybe a little bit cruel. Just adding half a frozen bag of greens to a meal for four people will cost an extra 50p. And that’s just one portion of veg at dinner.

To eat 10 portions a day, there needs to be three or four on a dinner plate if the target is going to be achievable – an extra £2 for one meal, or £14 a week for an evening meal with four portions of cheap frozen veggies each night. Add in a banana during the day, some fruit for breakfast, a snack of beans on toast, an apple before dinner, and then something else for supper? The food bill has got out of control, and the guilt sets in, much as it does when I’m left with no option but to buy cheap clothes I know have been made in a sweatshop overseas.

In an ideal world I would be dressing in Fairtrade cottons and eating produce from my local farmer’s market. In reality, a handful of sprouts and some green beans from the freezer accompany a meal, and my clothes are from the cheapest stores on the high street. In an ideal world, I would make my children smoothies every day for breakfast. I would source only the finest ingredients. I would only buy free range organic produce. I would eat 10 portions of fruit and veg a day.

This, though, isn’t an ideal world. This is Britain, hit by the effects of rising rents and an austerity budget. Many councils are set to raise taxes by 5% this year, adding another £100 at least to my bill for 2017. Tax credits, working benefits, housing benefits and every other benefit that isn’t an old age pension have been frozen for three years. Wages aren’t increasing to match the cost of living. Energy costs are going through the roof. In Britain today, an iceberg lettuce costs 75p, and I can promise you that a portion of lettuce won’t fill a stomach for long.

Ten a day? Maybe not.

A veg (or five) too far: why 10 portions a day is way too much to ask | Kathleen Kerridge

A moment that changed me: having a heart attack at 29 | Kathleen Kerridge

I was sick, but that was to be expected. The New Year’s Eve party had been a good one: 2007 had been a tough year; I had got through four separate operations, each one longer and more involved than the one before. I had been changed, worn a bit thin, and was suffering small bouts of depression. But I was still standing. A new year was to be celebrated.

So when I woke up sick, I put it down to the excesses of the night before. There had been a lot of laughter, music, and cheap wine. It had been a fun party – I never claimed it was a classy one.

I felt sick, but it wasn’t a normal sort of nausea. It was a sickness which left me panting and breathless. As the pain in my breastbone increased, and my arm felt as though it had been punched until it was dead, I began to realise something was wrong. Very wrong. I told my husband I thought I was having a heart attack. Understandably, he laughed and told me I had a hangover.

I just needed to sleep it off and I would be fine.

So that’s what I did. I rolled over and breathed slowly, forcing myself calm until sleep took me away from the pain. I never truly believed that, at not even 30 years old, I could actually be having a heart attack. So I slept, and when I woke up in the early evening, I felt a bit better. Well enough to tell myself I had been overreacting; I just needed to calm down at parties – a thought that tied in well with my resolution to live more healthily.

The next days turned into weeks, and weeks became months. I went from being healthy, to being very, very ill. Yet fear stopped me going to the doctor. Not fear of looking stupid, but fear that my suspicions were correct. That I had something seriously wrong with me, and this time it couldn’t be cut away.

I didn’t go to the doctor until July. It took me that long to admit to myself, and my family, that I didn’t have late-onset asthma, or severe heartburn. By this point, I couldn’t leave my house at all. Some days I couldn’t leave my bed. Most days my mother, disabled and in pain, had to travel a mile to get my infant daughter from a school less than 300 metres from my front door. I was sick constantly. My heart felt like a leaden weight tucked behind my ribcage, and I could feel its torturous heavy beats in my skull. By the time I broke down in the doctor’s office it felt as though I was staying alive through sheer force of will.

Fear stopped me going to the doctor. Not fear of looking stupid, but fear that my suspicions were correct

I was right. It was one of the rare times where being right was no victory. My doctor listened to me as I explained my “hangover” and how I had been feeling worse with each passing day. As I spoke, he called the nurse, and before I had mentioned having a sick bucket as a constant companion, he had me walking – slowly – down the stairs to be hooked up to an ECG machine. I was still saying I was sure I was overreacting as he phoned the hospital, booking me in urgently. I think I was still telling doctors I was sure it was nothing as nitroglycerin was sprayed under my tongue for the pain and I was wheeled into theatre for an emergency angiogram. Dye was injected into my heart and I watched the images unfurl on the screens next to me.

As a surgeon spoke, telling me words too big for me to grasp, I nodded as I cried, signing consent forms and blanking out the risks of angioplasty even as they were being explained to me. I cursed myself for being stupid – for leaving it all so long. It was a terrifying time, as I became used to a changed reality. A slower life.

‘I was still saying I was sure I was overreacting as they hooked me up to an ECG machine.’ Photograph: Universal Images Group Limited/Alamy

The following year, as Big Ben chimed in 2009, I raised my glass with a thanks more heartfelt than before, amazed I was still standing. Changed, absolutely, but still laughing, while the music still played and my heart still beat. That New Year’s Day, I was able to jump out of bed and walk along the beach, thankful to be alive.

The heart attack taught me, profoundly, not to take my health for granted, and not to sweat the small stuff. My weight bounces up and down, and I suffer from water retention; I don’t like the way I look now, bloated and larger than before, but it’s something I can take time to fix. I tell myself it won’t be for ever. A lot of the little things I do – writing, sewing and knitting – help me to cope, and to feel useful since my health problems forced me to stop working. No one would employ me now, not when a “bad day” means I can barely roll over in my bed without needing nitroglycerin.

I take my health seriously now. I walk for miles with my dog, and I’m tuned in to what “normal” means for me. I pick up the small signs that I’m not well sooner than I would have done before. When I suffered a serious bout of pneumonia I called an ambulance the moment I found it difficult to breathe. That lesson has been learnt. I eat healthily – low fat, low salt, low sugar, lots of vegetables. I cook simply, and I live each day as it comes; when I raise a glass now, I do so with feeling. And when I wake up each morning, I take just a small moment to smile to myself, tell myself that life is good, that I made it through another night.

A moment that changed me: having a heart attack at 29 | Kathleen Kerridge