Introduction

Food servings are standard amounts of food stuffs or drinks to help dietetic advice to promote and preserve health. The aim is to establish the serving size of fruits and vegetables (FH) to be used in food based dietary guidelines (FBDG).

Material and Methods:

Methodology of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was adapted to establish serving sizes for FBDG, along of the followed by the food exchange system. Data was collected from the FH portion sizes reported in nutritional surveys and common sizes available in the Spanish market, and they were adjusted to an easily recognisable quantities of food with equivalence on key nutrients: the compliance with public health goals for FH consumption was evaluated.

Results

Portion sizes typically reported in Spanish nutrition surveys are scarce and not homogeneous, and no data published in scientific journals on portion sizes were available. The Spanish FBDG, in spite of showing a range of serving size for FH, do not assure that they are interchangeable nor specify the method to obtain them. The serving of vegetables was 139,44g (DS:± 21.98, CV:0.16), 137,68g (DS:± 49,61, CV:0,36) for fruits and 28.00g (DS:± 7,53, CV:0.27) for dried fruits.

Conclusions

With the established servings, the recommendation of consuming “at least 5 servings of FH a day” would allow reaching the Public Health goals for FH established in 600g(net weight)/person/day. It is recommended that the Spanish Agency for Consumers, Food Safety and Nutrition (AECOSAN) uses this methodology to establish serving sizes for the rest of food groups that make up the FBDG for the Spanish population.

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