Last year, I wrote a post that I never uploaded questioning how hard it was to get 30 plant points a week. I wrote about what counts as a plant point, and how I think this makes far more sense than 5-a-day, then kept a diary of my week to see whether I naturally ate 30 plant foods a week, even as a plant based person.
Useful Resource: The Gut Health Doctor Plant Point Tracker
Aiming for 30 Plant Points a Week
That week became a full month. The first week, I looked back on my meals, why I’d eaten what I’d eaten and the general trends emerging and thought that week wasn’t reflective of an average week, so I’d do two. Week two, I got my period. Arguably, something that happens every five ish weeks is very routine, but I didn’t consider this an ‘average’ week for the second week in a row.
At that point, I thought three weeks would be dumb, and opted for a full month. And I hadn’t tracked everything that went into my body that closely for that long in a very long time. If by the end of week four, I didn’t think it looked ‘average’, I needed a reality check on what I put in my body.
In keeping that food diary with that big 3-0 goal in the back of my mind the entire time, I started thinking about the obstacles to getting there. Over the four weeks, I made it three times and failed once. Most of those weeks, I only scraped it. And I eat nothing but plants. This should have been easy.
If you’re aiming for 30 plant points a week as a food/ health goal this year, I’d recommend tracking your ‘average’ like I did first. It’s good to know what your baseline is, you might be there/ almost there already. And you might learn a few things about the way you eat that you hadn’t realised before.
Obstacles to a varied diet
There were two major obstacles I considered when I reflected on this process and my food diary at the end of the month. The significant one for me was not wanting food waste. I cook for one person three nights a week on average, and only two people on the others. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that means I either have leftovers or I have the same ingredients in my fridge that I need to make something else with.
So, even on some weeks when most of my meals were fresh and healthy, the plant numbers were lacking. I commonly found it easy to get to 20-23 by Wednesday or Thursday, but getting to 30 from there felt like an uphill battle some weeks. If you’re feeding a family of four (or more) this goal is a lot easier for the very simple fact you’re using most of the ingredients you buy to make one meal, without worrying about the rest.
The other, frankly, is money. Eating in season is cheaper and more environmentally sustainable, but you may struggle to get your 30 eating in season without serious planning. If you’re feeding fewer people, the smaller packs of fruits and vegetables can be considerably more expensive than the larger packs. 10p more for twice the volume? Looks like I’m having carrots two or three times this week, not once. And how affordable in season foods are varies considerably depending on the month. Berries are cheaper during the summer but are still much more expensive than a large bag of carrots. They go off a lot faster as well.
Time is another burden here, however, I’m assuming if you’re reading this, you’ve already decided you’re willing to invest some time in this process.
Finally, 30 plant points can be really inconvenient to calculate. Something simple like a Nakd bar (fruit and nuts – plants) or a pre-packed veggie burger will say they contain 1/2/3 of your five-a-day, but that burger has 15 ingredients, at least 12 of them are plants, but it certainly isn’t 12 plant points. Figuring out exactly how many points are in something you haven’t prepared yourself is challenging. The 30 plant points goal is best suited for those who cook mostly from scratch.
New Series
These obstacles were the inspiration for a new series for 2025. One post a month with a 30 plant points meal plan using mostly, if not all, in season ingredients. It can be used as inspiration, as a base for each week and switch out a few meals here and there to get to 30 each week without being too repetitive with meals, or as a way to encourage more variety because it’s easy to get stuck in a food rut.
January’s 30 Plant Points Meal Plan will be up next week and the first week of the month from there for the rest of 2025.
Happy New Year!
P.S. the post that never went up will be posted alongside January’s plan as an introduction.
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