Week one of 30 plants: a realistic count, not a perfect one

Thirty is a target for a week, not for week one. Spend the first seven days counting the plants you already eat, and change nothing. Whatever the number comes to, that is your start. In week two, add two or three new plants to it, not twenty.

That sounds slow. It is meant to be.

Why count before changing anything?

Because you cannot move a number you have never seen. Until a week is written down, you are guessing at your plants, and it is easy to guess from your best day rather than your Tuesday.

Counting first also shows you where your plants already come from. Often it is dinner. Breakfast and lunch are often the same few things on repeat, and that is useful to know before you start buying.

My own food on the wards was cereal, packet soup, instant noodles and a sad sandwich with one slice of cheese. If your week looks anything like that, the number will be low, and low is a perfectly good place to begin.

How do I count plants in week one?

Tick each plant the first time it appears in the week and ignore it after that. Cereal every morning is one point, not seven.

Vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds count a whole point each. Herbs, spices, garlic, tea, coffee and extra virgin olive oil count a quarter. White bread, white pasta, white rice, shop bought juice and anything from an animal count nothing. The full list, from almonds to za’atar, is in what counts as a plant point.

For a ready meal, a takeaway or a shop sandwich, count the plants you can see or that the label names, and do not lose sleep over the rest. This is a rough tally, not an audit.

What does a realistic first week look like?

Something like this. It is an example built from ordinary British food, not a record of anyone’s week.

Add coffee, tea, garlic and black pepper at a quarter each and the week comes to 17.

Look at where those points came from. Dinners did most of it. Breakfast gave wheat on Monday and a banana on Wednesday, and the lunches added lettuce and beans and little else. That is where week two goes.

How many plants should I add in week two?

Two or three. In the week above, a spoon of mixed seeds on the morning cereal is three new plants on its own: sunflower, pumpkin and linseed. That takes 17 to 20 with no new meals at all.

Notice what does not help the count. Swapping the white sandwich bread for wholemeal adds fibre, which is worth doing, but no new point, because wheat is already ticked from the cereal. The count rewards different plants, so the easy wins are things you are not eating yet, not better versions of things you are.

Keep the pace slow for a second reason. Each new plant is more fibre, and fibre arriving faster than your gut is used to tends to bring on bloating and wind. Building up a few plants at a time, with more to drink, gives your gut time to adjust. If it has already gone wrong, why more fibre made your bloating worse explains what is happening.

From there, the week after is another two or three. Most of it is buying differently rather than cooking more, and the 30 plants a week checklist has a full week from supermarket shelves that gets to thirty.

What if I never get to thirty?

Then you have a week with more plants in it than you used to, which was the point.

The thirty figure comes from one study, the American Gut Project, published in mSystems in 2018. It compared people who said they ate more than 30 plant types a week with people who said they ate 10 or fewer, and found more varied gut bacteria in the first group. That is an association in a group of volunteers, not proof of cause, and it says nothing about what happens at 18 or 24. The scoring came later, from dietitians and gut health writers. The NHS recommendation in England is still 5 A Day.

So think of thirty as a direction rather than a pass mark. If you cook for one or for people who push vegetables to the side of the plate, thirty plants when you cook for one has ideas that suit a smaller shop. And if you are not sure plants are where you should start, the which book quiz takes about a minute.

When counting plants is not the answer

Counting is for someone who feels broadly well. It is not a way to manage symptoms. Ask for an urgent GP appointment or get help from NHS 111 if “you have lost a lot of weight for no reason”, “you’re bleeding from your bottom or have bloody diarrhoea”, or “you find a hard lump or swelling in your tummy”. If you feel bloated regularly, or you have tried changing your diet and still keep feeling bloated, the NHS says to see a GP.