Percent adults meeting the recommended '5-a-day' recommendation - WMCA

Proportion of the population who, when surveyed, reported that they had eaten the recommended 5 portions of fruit and vegetables on a usual day. This is the weighted number of respondents aged 16 and over, with valid responses to the question 'How many portions of fruit and vegetables did you eat yesterday?', eating at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables in the previous day.

All analyses for this indicator have been weighted to be representative of the population of England. These indicators use data from the Sport England Active Lives (AL) survey. These indicators were not intended to be, and should not be, compared directly with other sources of diet data. The AL questions are more simplistic than those used in other sources e.g., National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) or Health Survey for England (HSE). Estimates from the different surveys are not directly comparable as the data collection methodologies are different.

For the HSE, participants are asked numerous questions, including separate questions about fruits, vegetables, and pulses, and portion sizes. For the NDNS, data are collected using food diaries. Foods are then broken down to their component parts and fruit and vegetable portions are calculated. The method used in AL enables responses from a very large sample to be collected which means we can present data for each local authority which cannot be done using other sources.

The main purpose of the data set used for the PHOF indicators is to enable comparisons between areas and to measure progress. Latest update presents data from Active Lives for the period mid-November to mid-November. The current estimates (2020 to 2021 onwards) are not comparable with the previous estimates (between 2015 to 2016 and 2019 to 2020) as the current estimates are consistently around 20 percentage points lower than the previous estimates. Although the estimates of those meeting the ‘5-a-day’ fruit and vegetable consumption recommendations are significantly lower from the single question, the ranking order across local authorities or inequality groups is similar.

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