The "seven a day" recommendation seems to be baseless myth. Nobody can figure out where it came from. Surveys find no correlation to life span or health beyond two servings of vegetables a day.
I just quickly went through the references and every one of them is either: a pooled analysis (inscrutable), a relative risk factor analysis (worthless; assumptions piled on assumptions), or doesn't indicate anything about servings.
I have in the past seen actual population studies, not pop media articles, looking at relative vegetable consumption and coming up blank. High rates of heart disease in indian vegetarians, very low rates of heart disease in low vegetable consumption mormons, etc.
Actual controlled experiments (not surveys) come up blank when they feed people more fruit and vegetables than a relatively low cut-off. Of course surveys are going to be very hard to get any useful information out of because of course health conscious people in America will tend to eat vegetables; that doesn't establish causation, only that they follow one piece of advice whether valid or not. Look at these actual experiments:
>> High rates of heart disease in indian vegetarians...
Have you ever been to an Indian restaurant and ordered a vegetarian meal? While incredibly flavorful, I wouldn't classify it as even moderately healthy--
What is served in Indian restaurants (especially in the US) is far removed from and has way too much oil / cream than what is the norm in Indian homes.
Also, a fruit heavy diet is particularly bad for weight loss. Humans don't deal with fructose too well.