The great fruit and veggie experiment

  One of the things I've been struggling with, WW-wise, is the concept of "free" fruits and veggies.  Because as it turns out, these items are only free if you eat them separately, or out of hand.  As soon as you incorporate them into a recipe, their nutrient values get added and their PP values are calculated.  So for example, if I make a smoothie, and eat a banana on the side, then the banana has 0 PPV.  However, if I add that banana to the smoothie, it can have up to 4 PPV.  Same banana, but very different calculation.  I've tested this on a couple of things through the e-tools Recipe Builder.
   Another example:  when I make pasta, I tend to load it up with veggies, thinking they are free. And on e-tools, if I add them to my tracker as part of a meal, I get charged points for the pasta and oil, and the veggies list as 0.  BUT if I take the same meal and run it through the recipe builder and call it "Pasta with Veggies", it has a very different PPV.  
   So this week I've decided to undertake the Great Fruit and Veggie Experiment.  I'm going to eat as I normally would, but anytime I'm not eating fruit or veg out of hand, or separately, then I'm going to run it through the Recipe Builder, calculate the PPV and use that figure to see what the difference might be.
   Last example, my new favorite side-dish obsession is butternut squash and apple, diced up and roasted with a small amount of canola oil, salt and cinnamon.  I've been thinking that this only costs me PPV for the oil, which would be 2.  But in the recipe builder, it tells me that a serving is actually 4.  Not a huge difference by itself, but I have a suspicion that a bunch of those little differences may add up.  Maybe not as much as I fear, but as someone who always uses all my weeklies, any overages may be an issue.
   I'll post later in the week with some of the findings...I think this will be good because it will help me REALLY think about what I'm eating and how many PPVs I'm using.