“I’ve been taking an iron supplement for three weeks and still feel tired.” This was the comment from a woman attending a series of nutrition seminars I was running. She had been discharged from hospital three weeks earlier and prescribed an iron supplement. “When do you take it?” I asked her. “With breakfast,” she replied. Breakfast consisted of muesli with low fat milk or wholegrain toast and a cup of tea. A healthy breakfast – yes. But a suitable meal to take an iron supplement – no.

“Don’t give me any dinner this week,” my husband said to me. “I’ll just have your fruit drink.” What delightful words for any busy mum to hear: No cooking real meals for a week! Well actually I did still cook a little something extra for myself and my son. But fruit drink every night was a great way to start off November – the month set aside in New Zealand to promote eating ‘Five-a-day’. Five-a-day means eating five serves of fruit and vegetables each day. It’s not that much. A serve is one average sized piece of fruit, half a cup of vegetables or a cup of salad. For children, a serve is the amount they can hold in one cupped hand.

I’ve worked out that my fruit drink has about 11 or 12 serves and 22-24 grams of fibre. Split between three of us, we just about hit our daily 5-a-day with one large glass! And no wonder my husband doesn’t feel like dinner:

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: making your own jam or marmalade is a real eye-opener to how much sugar it contains. Whenever I visit my parents I love to pick grapefruit fresh off the tree. It’s fun to shake the tree and duck out of the way of the falling fruit. A grapefruit dropping on your head is not a pleasant experience! Fresh grapefruit are rich in vitamin C making them ideal to eat for breakfast as they enhance iron absorption from your breakfast cereal.

Not everyone can handle such a stringent attack on their taste-buds first thing in the morning. Some prefer to eat their grapefruit toned down with lots of sugar, that is, as marmalade. I have just made my second batch of marmalade this year. I lined up all the jars after I had filled them and worked out that each jar contains approximately one grapefruit and one cup of sugar. Oh dear, at least it makes a great gift for friends.