My regular weekly grocery shopping includes:
- 3-4 main fruits/berries. This week it was a cantaloupe, apples, couple of mango, and strawberries. Last week it was pears, grapes, and a few kiwis. Have my mind set on a pineapple next week, not sure what else - will see what looks good.
- Lettuce - variety changes from week to week, but we always have some sort of lettuce. Often romaine, red leaf, or mixed spring greens.
- Spinach, to add a darker leaf to salads
- Cucumbers
- Bell peppers
- Carrots and/or celery
- Tomatoes (usually cherry tomatoes this time of year; switch to full-size from my garden in the summer)
- Broccoli
- Green beans
- 2-3 other vegetables to use in side dishes for dinner. This week was cauliflower, asparagus, and brussel sprouts. Last week was zucchini and snap peas.

On any given day, my kids have:
- Fruit with breakfast
- Fruit with lunch, and/or applesauce as a snack
- Sometimes a vegetable with lunch too (especially if it's an applesauce day)
- Salad with lettuce, spinach and some combination of bell peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, celery
- A cooked vegetable with dinner

So in the course of a week, I'd say they eat about 4 different fruits and 10-12 different vegetables - but only a few of those are the same every week. We do a lot of seasonal variation. Watermelon in the summer, apples/pears in the fall, citrus in the winter.

Anonymous wrote:In the course of last week -
Apples
Bananas,
Grapes
Mango
Oranges
Strawberries
Blueberry
Melons
Pineapple (can)
Guava
Lemon

Vegetable and herbs -
Onions, Ginger, Garlic, raw Turmeric, Tomatoes, Mint, Cilantro, Green chillies, Thai Basil, Lemon Grass, Galangal, Shallots

Spinach
Eggplant
Okra
Wax Gourd
Corn
Bell Peppers
Eggplant
Broccoli
Cabbage
BokChoy
Snow Peas
Peas
Mushrooms (4 types)
Cauliflower
Zuccini
Brussles Sprout
Potatoes
Okinawa Purple Yams
Red Pumpkin
Baby Corn
Water chestnut
Bamboo Shoots
Yard long beans
Green beans
Sunflower Sprouts
Mung Bean Sprouts
Mustard Greens
Purlane (Kulpha)
Kale
Cucumber

POH-TAH-TOES

Anonymous wrote:In the course of last week -
Apples
Bananas,
Grapes
Mango
Oranges
Strawberries
Blueberry
Melons
Pineapple (can)
Guava
Lemon

Vegetable and herbs -
Onions, Ginger, Garlic, raw Turmeric, Tomatoes, Mint, Cilantro, Green chillies, Thai Basil, Lemon Grass, Galangal, Shallots

Spinach
Eggplant
Okra
Wax Gourd
Corn
Bell Peppers
Eggplant
Broccoli
Cabbage
BokChoy
Snow Peas
Peas
Mushrooms (4 types)
Cauliflower
Zuccini
Brussles Sprout
Potatoes
Okinawa Purple Yams
Red Pumpkin
Baby Corn
Water chestnut
Bamboo Shoots
Yard long beans
Green beans
Sunflower Sprouts
Mung Bean Sprouts
Mustard Greens
Purlane (Kulpha)
Kale
Cucumber

POH-TAH-TOES

Did I write baby carrots?

In the course of last week -
Apples
Bananas,
Grapes
Mango
Oranges
Strawberries
Blueberry
Melons
Pineapple (can)
Guava
Lemon

Vegetable and herbs -
Onions, Ginger, Garlic, raw Turmeric, Tomatoes, Mint, Cilantro, Green chillies, Thai Basil, Lemon Grass, Galangal, Shallots

Spinach
Eggplant
Okra
Wax Gourd
Corn
Bell Peppers
Eggplant
Broccoli
Cabbage
BokChoy
Snow Peas
Peas
Mushrooms (4 types)
Cauliflower
Zuccini
Brussles Sprout
Potatoes
Okinawa Purple Yams
Red Pumpkin
Baby Corn
Water chestnut
Bamboo Shoots
Yard long beans
Green beans
Sunflower Sprouts
Mung Bean Sprouts
Mustard Greens
Purlane (Kulpha)
Kale
Cucumber

POH-TAH-TOES

DD is 2.5, so I'm still trying to get her palate to expand.

She likes fruit more than vegetables (unsurprisingly).

Fruit she'll eat:
Raspberries
Bananas
Blueberries
Blackberries
Cantaloupe
Grapes
Watermelon
Clementines

Vegetables she'll eat:
Carrots
Peas
Corn
Butternut squash (in soup)
Pickles (do they count?)

Then she'll eat tons of different vegetables in soup (tomatoes, celery, rutabaga, etc.) that she wouldn't eat on their own.

That's far from 25, but I'm pretty happy, given her age.

I’d say we’re varied, but it’s more week to week vs. 25 in the same week. Eg. I’ll buy kale one week, cabbage another week, chard another week vs all three in the same week. Who has the budget for that?

This week:

Cabbage, spinach, cucumbers, three colors of sweet peppers (count as 1) raspberries, Asian pear, sweet potato, butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, broccoli, sweet pea, cauliflower, orange, avocado, watermelon.

That’s 16, so no where near that recommendation, but I’m pretty happy with it.

OP, does your mother have advanced nutritional training? I mean, I appreciate that she's a doctor, but the vast majority of MDs have incredibly poor nutritional knowledge.

Anonymous wrote:We do 2 fruits and 2 vegetables a day. So probably 20 total because we do eat some of the same like broccoli and green beans.

You really buy 20 different fruist and vegetables each week?

3yr old more like over a month:

Apples
Banana
Strawberries
Blueberries
Lemon
Limes
Kiwi
Mango
Pineapple
Carrot
Fennel
Green beans
Peas
Broccoli
Celery
Potatoes
Cucumber
Tomatoes

Yeah, not happening for us. The only vegetables we eat regularly are green beans, broccoli, edamame, carrots, spinach, cucumber.. and that's stretching it. And I'm still pretty sure that's more than most of our peers.

Fruits we eat mostly what's affordable with exceptions. In winter we only have bananas, apples, pears. Lately we've been eating pineapple, apples, mango, bananas, pears, strawberries, and we'll eat more berries and cherries for like a week over the summer.

We do 2 fruits and 2 vegetables a day. So probably 20 total because we do eat some of the same like broccoli and green beans.

Offered and eaten in varying amounts between home & school over the course of a month:

Apples
Oranges / clementines / grapefruit
Berries
Kiwi
Pineapple
Banana
Melon (cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon)

Peas
Carrots
Limas
Edamame
Peppers
Onions
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Eggplant
Squash / zucchini (yellow, spaghetti, butternut, etc.)
Veggie bites or patties with: spinach, kale, broccoli, edamame, sweet potato, etc.

Then a few like star fruit or mango or artichokes that we might only have a couple times a year.

So he’s regularly exposed to 25+ but he’s also 3, so sometimes just eats peas and blueberries for a week straight.

No one in my family gets anywhere near that variety, mostly because I have neither the time to meal plan and shop to that extent nor the money to hire a personal chef.

We tend to buy what's in season, so we get a reasonable variety over time, but not in any given week.

Generally:

Apples
Strawberries
Blue berries
Grapes
Carrots
Cucumbers
Lettuce
Red peppers
Green beans or broccoli
Peas
Sometimes mango or pineapple

Not volume of produce, but number of varieties.

I have been having some health issues, so my mom-- a doctor-- has advised me (among other things, of course!) to try and eat 25 different fruits and vegetables per week. The amount of each individual variety is unimportant, although I'm sure a single leaf of arugula might not allow me to count arugula.

This got me thinking about my kid-- and kids in general-- and how varied their intake is. What about yours? Do you make any efforts along these lines, or do they eat a variety organically (so to speak)?