How to eat 30 different plants a week

If you struggled with the five-a-day fruit and veg rule, there’s good news and bad news. First the good news: experts are no longer quite so convinced.

The bad news? The new target is 30 plants a week – and the plants all have to be different.

Fortunately, celebrity chef and food campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has made this the subject of his latest book, How to Eat 30 Plants a Week. By pulling out just two or three of his recipes, within a week you’ll hit the target. He almost makes it look easy, which is his intention.

“You’d think it was going to be harder than five-a-day, but weirdly, I don’t think it is,” he says. “It’s partly because this takes the pressure off obsessing over fresh fruit and vegetables.”

With ‘plants’, you can think more broadly – a handful of herbs, a sprinkle of spices, a tin of lentils, a snack of nuts, a shot of coffee and even chocolate (though the less processed, the better).

So where did this 30-a-week target spring from?

It’s about gut health and our microbiome – the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in our digestive tracts and play a central role in health. It’s home to 70% of our immune cells, and also important for heart and brain function, metabolism and weight-management, mental health, clear skin, energy levels – it’s a long list.

The argument goes that the more diverse our gut microbes, the healthier we will be.

In one US and UK study of 11,000 volunteers led by British epidemiologist Professor Tim Spector, those who ate 30 plants a week were found to have optimal gut health.

“I know Tim,” says Hugh, “so I rang him up and asked if this 30-plant-a-week thing was real.”

He confirmed there was good science behind it, so Hugh made it the subject of his next book.

“I was already getting to 20 pretty easily,” says Hugh. “If you’re interested in cooking, you’re probably already on 15 or 20. The weird thing about the five-a-day rule is that it almost encourages you to get stuck in a rut as for many it’s the same five-a-day – an apple, an orange, carrots, peas, cucumber.”

Though Hugh is an omnivore – and this book is omnivorous too – he believes too much focus on meat and fish has led us to neglect plants. He once went vegetarian for six months and found that it made him a far more adventurous and accomplished cook.

“Meat and fish hog all our attention,” he says. “I enjoy them, but I probably have meat or fish just once or twice a week now.

“As soon as you start thinking of plants as your primary building blocks, then instinctively, you start giving them more respect and doing things with them that you’d normally do with meat.

“You put the spices and herbs on them, roast them in the oven or dry fry them, caramelising, searing, or building a sauce with loads of herbs.”

When it comes to upping your plant intake, Hugh has lots of tips. One is to double or triple up.

If you’re chopping an onion, he says, throw in garlic too, or a leek, or a shallot – or all three – then scatter on some chives. If you’re making a dahl from red lentils, add in a tin of brown lentils – and tomatoes, plus a couple of carrots. Nuts and seeds are another easy win.

“Sprinkle them into a salad or stir into a curry,” says Hugh. “I make my own trail mix with a handful of nuts, seeds, some dried fruit and dark chocolate. That’s more than five plants in one quick snack.”

In his book, there’s a recipe for this and similar shortcuts, such as a seven-plant pesto, for soups or pasta, or dukka.

None of the plants in Hugh’s book are obscure or hard to source. Many of the recipes are what he calls ‘everyday’ – but with added vroom: a cottage garden pie, gazpacho, overnight oats, a herby bean and celery salad. Hugh isn’t one for food fads.

“Sometimes things become trendy for a bit,” he says. “Once, we were all supposed to be excited about oriental greens. Have you tasted Chinese mustard? Sometimes you’d eat a funky winter salad and just get a mouthful of bitter.”

And he doesn’t want to create food stress either.

“Diversity is great for health,” he says, “but it’s also for taste, flavour and texture. From a cook’s point of view, it just means lots more delicious things to make in the kitchen. That’s all you need to know to get stuck in.”