Eat your vegetables. Not.

Your government now recommends four and a half cups of fruits and vegetables (that’s nine servings) for people who eat 2,000 calories a day. The guidelines will be updated later this year, The New York Times reports, and some suggest making them more visual, for example, filling half the plate or bowl with vegetables.

It probably won't work. Right off the bat, do you eat nine servings of anything in a day?

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a nationwide study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded.

And this week the NPD Group, a market research company, released the 25th edition of its annual report, “Eating Patterns in America.” Only 23 percent of meals include a vegetable. The number of dinners prepared at home that included a salad was 17 percent; in 1994, it was 22 percent. At restaurants, salads ordered as a main course at either lunch or dinner dropped by half since 1989, to a mere 5 percent.