How can the 5 a day message be fixed to boost consumption?

5 a day is one of the UK’s most recognisable public health slogans – but pressure is mounting for the government to rethink the 23-year-old message.

Last year’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey revealed UK fruit & veg consumption remained “woefully low” (see pie charts, below) despite public awareness sitting above 90%.

And last month, a group of campaigners rode 120 miles to Downing Street to demand a formal review of the framework.

So, why isn’t it working, and is there a way to fix it?

“5 a day is both a tremendous success and a tremendous failure,” says Food Foundation executive director Anna Taylor. “On the one hand, most people know what it is. On the other, most people fail to meet it.”

Part of the problem is noise. In a world where consumers are bombarded by fibremaxxing videos, high-protein hacks, ‘complete meal’ drinks and more supplements than they can realistically know what to do with, 5 a day has quietly slipped into the background.

Without sustained backing from industry or government, the simplest message in nutrition risks being drowned out.

Another problem, believes Taylor, is that the 5 a day initiative “cannot in any way compete with the advertising machine for junk food”.

According to this week’s Broken Plate report, just 3% of traditional ad spend goes on fruit & veg, compared with about 30% on unhealthy foods.

There have been attempts to shift the balance. Veg Power – the non-profit behind the ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them’ campaign – set out to prove that applying the same creative firepower used to sell junk food could get children eating more veg. The campaign launched in 2019 with funding from all 11 of the UK’s biggest supermarkets. As of this year the list of major supermarket funders comprises five: Tesco, Co-op, Waitrose and Ocado, with Sainsbury’s the ­primary sponsor.

“It worked well,” says Taylor. “But this sort of campaign needs to be always on, with ­sustainable financing.”

Affordability is also a barrier. With healthier options costing almost twice as much per calorie, according to the Broken Plate report, the UK’s poorest families would now need to spend 85% of their disposable income to afford a government-recommended healthy diet as a result of the cost of living crisis and there is “growing evidence that everyone, but particularly low-income households, is buying less fruit & veg”, says Obesity Health Alliance policy and advocacy lead Beth Bradshaw.

The British Nutrition Foundation last month called for a structural shift in pricing to make healthy food cheaper than HFSS equivalents, in a report billed as a ‘blueprint’ for supermarkets to tackle obesity.

Economic inequality is compounded in so-called ‘food deserts’, where access to fresh produce is limited but fast-food outlets are plentiful, notes Bradshaw. Government interventions such as the Healthy Start scheme and School Fruit and Vegetable scheme have attempted to tackle these barriers, while consultations on updated School Food Standards and the nutrient profiling model aim to drive further change.

A blunt instrument

A deliberately blunt instrument, 5 a day was never meant to be the end goal. Initially based on World Health Organization guidance of a minimum 400g of fruit & veg per day, it was intended to be simple.

That simplicity has come at a cost of confusion over what counts as a single portion (80g is about eight broccoli florets). According to a 2024 YouGov survey commissioned by Whitworths, nearly 60% of UK adults mistakenly believe they are already hitting the target.

Bradshaw believes the message is too weak. “In Australia, they recommend seven, in France it’s 10 and in Japan – largely considered one of the healthiest countries in the world – it’s 17,” she says.

But changing the headline now would risk adding to confusion, warns nutrition scientist Bridget Benelam. “Consistency is critical for public health communication,” she says.

Professor Sarah Berry, chief scientist at Zoe and research scientist at King’s College London, says problems arise “when people treat it as the whole answer”.

“It doesn’t capture all the important aspects of a healthy diet such as plant diversity, nuts, seeds and whole grains”, she says, arguing consumers can technically reach 5 a day with a limited range of foods.

This gap is driving interest in alternative frameworks. “Aiming for 30 plants a week gives people something positive and additive to aim for,” Berry says. “It shifts focus away from restriction and towards variety, but it must stay practical”.

That may mean mixing beans into a salad, using herbs to flavour a sauce or adding a handful of seeds to breakfast.

Whitworths director of health Phil Gowland sees 5 a day as the UK’s “most powerful and successful food-related health initiative” thanks to huge cultural penetration, but he believes its oversimplified nature has contributed to the nation “falling out of love” with it.

In its Gaps to Gains campaign, Whitworths is calling for a formal review and refresh of the framework to ensure it “better reflects modern nutrition science”.

That could include recognising a broader range of nutrient-dense plant-based foods such as nuts, seeds and dried fruit within the official 5 a day guidance. “There’s a clear case for considering what role nuts and seeds could have in a future version of the framework,” says Gowland, who also sits on Nesta’s advisory board.

“Not least because more than 60% of people say they would eat more nuts and seeds daily if a 25g portion counted as one of their 5 a day. That’s a significant opportunity to give people a practical, affordable way to improve their diet.”

The 5 a day message clearly plays an important role thanks to near universal levels of recognition, but as a baseline only, to be considered better than nothing. If the government bows to pressure to update it, its challenge will be to build on it without undermining its accessibility and adding to the ‘noise’ – thereby throwing away what influence it has.