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Could I really reach the magic number without spending more on my weekly food shop?

By Lauren Potts

Why 30 plant points?

Experts like Dr Rupy and Tim Spector say eating 30 plant points a week will improve our health - and there are studies to back it up. The American Gut Project on 10,000 participants and found those who ate 30 or more different types of plants a week had a more diverse gut microbiome. Science suggests this can , , and . Where do I sign up?

But first - what counts as a plant point?

There’s six groups to choose from: fruit, veg, wholegrains (like brown rice, oats, barley and quinoa) , legumes (i.e. lentils, chickpeas and beans), nuts and seeds, and herbs and spices. Tofu also makes the list as it’s made from soya; ditto tea, which comes from a plant. And happily, the same goes for coffee and dark chocolate (with 70% cocoa solids or more) since they come from seeds.

Most plants count for one point, regardless of how much consumed except herbs, spices, tea, coffee, stock and olive oil, which count for a quarter. What doesn’t count is eating it more than once, so if you eat an apple one day, you don’t get any more points for eating it the next. Nor does it count when the plant becomes overly processed.

How to plan for more plants

Going into this experiment, I was confident about hitting the target. I eat quite healthily and estimated I was eating about 20 plants a week. Where I suspected I might fall is repetition - I often batch cook and eat the same meals on rotation. I’m also gluten intolerant which reduces my options for wholegrain sources.

Consultant gut health dietitian, Kirsten Jackson recommends making sure each meal has a carbohydrate – oats, wild rice, buckwheat and quinoa all count. She also suggests making clever additions to your typical roster of dishes rather than starting from scratch.

“I think where a lot of people go wrong is they think they need new recipes or a whole overhaul,” she says. “With this it’s all about ‘the more the merrier’ and looking at what you’re already eating and bringing [other] foods in.”

She suggests adding vegetables or lentils to traditionally low-fibre dishes like spaghetti bolognese, or using tofu instead of red meat, to increase plant points.

“Look at basing it on what you’re already eating and pimping it up,” she says.

With that in mind I made sure my cupboards and fridge were stocked with nuts and veg. To ensure variety without the expense, I bought cheaper frozen fruit instead of fresh and added to my shopping basket canned mixed beans - a clever hack since each tin counts for six points (one for each bean). All told, I spent the same amount in the supermarket as I normally would, £40-50 for the week.

A strong start

I suspected the clean slate of a fresh week would see me swiftly rack up points - at least in the beginning - and I wasn’t wrong.

I kicked off Monday with tomatoes and spinach alongside scrambled eggs and tea (2.25 points) for breakfast, then soup for lunch made from carrots, onion, garlic, stock and spices, plus an extra point for cucumber and crackers on the side (5). But it was dinner that really counted: tofu with quinoa, edamame, avocado, spring onion, pak choy, two types of sesame seeds, oil and ginger, taking my daily total to 15.75 points… proof that one very well-planned meal can massively boost your plant intake.

Keen to keep it up, porridge on Tuesday morning (oats, banana, cinnamon and hazelnuts) earned me another 3.25 points, while slow-cooked chicken thighs, leeks and peas for dinner accounted for another three. Lunch was packed with points thanks to the mixed beans on top of a baked sweet potato with tuna and salad leaves (eight points). An apple, coffee and dark chocolate took my total to 17.25 for the day.

And there you have it. 33 points. I hadn’t planned to complete the challenge in two days but found it ridiculously easy to do so. Maintaining the variety, however, was far more difficult.

Dwindling enthusiasm

I soon got into the habit of training myself to make swaps. I switched cinnamon for ginger in my porridge and the hazelnuts for pecans - both very nice changes. But then I found myself in the quite bizarre situation of eating walnuts, which I don’t even like, simply for the sake of an extra plant point.

Jackson says we need to have some awareness around what we’re eating but not let it become all-consuming, which is seemingly where I was heading. Rather than doing too much all at once, she recommends setting weekly goals, such as buying three types of vegetables and using them up or having a pot of mixed seeds on the table that you add to meals.

“It’s about building in habits, rather than becoming obsessive,” she cautions.

As the week went on, my enthusiasm and points tally dwindled. I fell into the trap of thinking I needed to cook something different every day but also picked up a few easy wins, such as sprinkling sunflower seeds and radish on my avocado on toast (two points) and adding toppings to soup like chilli, peanuts, basil and cauliflower leaves (four extra points).

Wednesday and Thursday still garnered a respectable 22.25 points thanks to a green fish curry, while trying out a new recipe – halloumi bake - introduced more vegetables to the week.

But by Friday I was eating an increasing pile of leftovers, meaning I finished the day on two points. As for the weekend, when I was visiting friends and away from my well-stocked kitchen, I added precisely one point for each day.

It was inevitable the tally would taper off. But I hardly needed to be concerned - I finished the week on a whopping 58.5 plant points… almost double what’s recommended. Some might even call that over the top.

In conclusion

It was easy to adjust to counting plant points and I was surprised by how quickly they totted up. I suspect that’s partly because I had the time and inclination to make meals from scratch - eating on the go and at the mercy of convenience food would make it a far harder task.

But I couldn’t help but think much of it was common sense and the idea of getting 30 plant points a week is little more than a rebrand of the message we’ve heard countless times before: eat a healthy, balanced diet that looks like the rainbow.

“Every diet that comes out, whether it’s ketogenic, carnivore, eat that, eat this, it all comes back to the most healthy diet, which is the Mediterranean diet, every single time,” says Jackson. “It’s already doing 30 plant sources a week - but that’s not a sexy message. If I go on Instagram and do a post that says ‘eat in moderation, have olive oil,’ the views are so low. But if I say, ‘you must have 30 plant points’ everyone is clicking on it.”

What the experiment did remind me of is the importance of variety. Switching up nuts and spices, adding seeds, or even just buying fruit I wouldn’t normally choose are all good habits. But I don’t need to be so gung-ho next time.

Originally published October 2024