Cake CAN count as one of your five a day... but there's a catch

21 March 2019, 17:28

If you're a fan of carrot cake then it's great news for your diet plan!

Who doesn't love a slice of cake? But as summer approaches and we all start to work on our waistline, any excuse to tuck into a slice of red velvet or Victoria sponge can lay on your conscience.

A simple answer is to look for cakes with vegetables, and then you can reassure yourself that you've had one of your five-a-day.

The top ranked recipe for carrot cake on google asks for a whopping 525 grams of grated carrots, which by the NHS' standards amounts to over eight portions of vegetables in the entire cake.

Therefore, a large slice should definitely count as one of your five-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables, however this comes with a calorific catch.

The average slice of carrot cake would contain more than 900 calories, so if you were to attempt to get your day's vegetable quota from the cake, you'd have to consume 4,500 calories - which is almost four times the daily recommended amount.

Other surprising ways to fill up on vegetables include beetroot cake, vegetable crisps, guacamole dip or even just a good old fashioned dinner of baked beans on toast.

Shockingly, potatoes are thought to not officially count as one of your five-a-day portions due to the vegetable's main nutrient being starch, which places them in the carbohydrate category.

Similarly, tomato ketchup doesn't contain enough tomatoes to qualify as a legitimate vegetable portion.