Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're talking about plants. For years, our diet's been guided by a simple three-word slogan, five a day.

While it's well established that eating fruit and vegetables is good for us. Some

experts believe the five a day message puts too much emphasis on quantity and not enough on variety.

So is it time to adjust our guiding plant principle? I'm joined by Professor Tim Spector and

chef Hugh Fernley Whittinsall who advocate for a new goal, eating 30 different plants each week.

Together we'll explore why diversity is key for your microbiome and share some delicious

ways to bring more plants onto your plate.

How big a role overall should plants be playing in our diet?

And where does this number 30 come from?

So the first thing to be clear on, which isn't clear on all the guidelines, particularly

the UK ones, is what constitutes a plant?

Most people just think of them as fruits and veg, and that's where the UK and many other countries, five a day, comes from, where at least one

can be orange juice, which is ridiculous to have that as a core health outcome.

And really, we're forgetting that nuts and seeds and herbs and spices are very much part of that mix.

And that's where a lot of these outdated guidelines have gone very wrong, because it's

much broader than people think.

So when you're talking about five a day of which one is a drink, you've only got four

to have which can accompany your steak, you know, a few little accoutrements around there

and you think you've done it.

Whereas whole point is to make plants the centre of the meal and actually have the fish and the meat as, you know, optional side plates.

So interesting that. I mean, from a chef's point of view, we traditionally have, and a lot of us still do, including myself from time

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