Get Your “5 A Day” For Under 25 Carbs

You can’t eat fruits and vegetables on a low carb diet, right? Wrong! Fruits and vegetables are a vital part of any diet and supply vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other nutrients that are important to your health and well being. Even though most people know the value of fruits and vegetables, it seems a lot of people get caught up in thinking that they must eat only meat on a low carb eating plan and often don’t get enough fruits and vegetables despite what their diet plans recommend. You should try to eat at least the minimum USRDA of fruits and vegetables, especially raw, to provide you with fiber which is not found in meats and can be lacking on a low carb eating plan, as well as vitamins and minerals for added energy.

How much do you need?

The USDA recommends that you get 2-4 servings of fruits and 3-5 servings of vegetables a day. The actual amount of servings recommended for each individual is based on their recommended calorie intake. So, if you eat1600 calories a day you would want 2 servings of fruits and 3 servings of vegetables, if you eat 2200 calories a day you should have 3 servings fruit and 4 servings vegetables and if you eat 2800 calories a day you should eat 4 servings fruit and 5 servings vegetables.

But one of the great things about low carb eating is that you don’t have to count calories, so how do you figure out how many servings you need if you don’t know how many calories you are eating? Well, first off, You can’t eat “too many” fruits and vegetables so if you can fit in the max servings (or more) and still stay within your carb budget than go for it! Otherwise, you might judge the amount of servings you need by assessing your size and activity level. If you are small and/or have a sedentary lifestyle than you would probably fall into the 1600 calorie category and, therefore should target 2 servings fruits and 3 of vegetables. If you are a bigger person and/or very active you should probably target the higher range of servings.

What is a serving?

When measuring out servings of fruits and vegetables it is important that you stick to the amount for 1 serving, otherwise you will be adding more carbs and could go over your limit. Below are serving sizes for raw and cooked foods:

Raw Vegetables = 1 cup
Cooked Vegetables = ½ cup
Raw Fruit = 1 medium fruit or ½ cup cut up or canned fruit
Juice (Fruit or Vegetable) = 3/4 cup

It’s easier than you think!

If you want to get in your 5 a day and only add 25 g carbs total to your daily carb intake, you simply need to find fruits and veggies whose serving size is around 5 grams of net carbs each. When figuring the carb amounts in fruits and vegetables, it is important to remember to subtract the fiber from the total carbs to get the “net carbs”. This is because fiber is not digestible and does not convert to glucose, therefore it doesn’t count as a carbohydrate in your low carb budget. So if you have a piece of fruit that is 10 carbs and 4 grams fiber your net carbs is only 6 grams! The fruits and vegetables listed below are shown with their net carb amounts.

Below I have listed out 29 choices you can add to your diet for under 10 grams (approx) of net carbs for each serving (as defined by the USDA). You can mix and match, so for instance if you ate spinach at 1 grams for 1 serving you could then have strawberries for 8 grams of net carbs and still not go over the 10 grams for both servings.

Artichoke ............. 7.5g
Asparagus ............. 2g
Avocado ............. 5g
Beets ............. 8g
Broccoli ............. 2.6g
Carrot ............. 5g
Cauliflower ........... 3g
Celery ............. 1/2g
cucumber with peel..... 6g
Eggplant .............3g
Green beans ...........5g
Kumquat (1) ...........3g
Lettuce .............1g
Mushrooms .............4g
Passion fruit .........4g
Peach .............9g
Peas .............10g
Peppers .............10g
Plum .............8g
Prunes (dried) ........5g
Rhubarb .............7g
Spaghetti squash ......1/2g
Spinach .............1g
Strawberries ..........8g
Swiss chard ...........7g
Tangerine .............8g
Tomato .............2.5g
Yellow squash .........2.5g
Zucchini .............3.5g