(Reuters Health) – Eating fewer than five servings of fruit and vegetables each day is linked with a higher chance of dying early, according to a large study from Sweden.
People who said they never ate fruit and vegetables died an average of three years sooner than those who ate plenty of apples, carrots and tomatoes, researchers found.
Many public health organizations worldwide recommend eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, but previous studies have been inconclusive on whether meeting that guideline helps improve health and by how much, researchers said.
The new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows the five-a-day recommendations are optimal, said Alicja Wolk, who worked on the research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Her team did not find any improvement in survival for people who ate more than five servings of fruit and vegetables each day, compared to those who just met the guideline.
The results are based on data collected from more than 71,000 Swedes, aged 45 to 83, who were followed for 13 years.
Participants were surveyed about their diets in 1997 and 1998 and reported how often they ate fruit – including oranges, apples, bananas and berries – and vegetables, such as carrots, beets, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes and pea soup.
Nearly 11,500 of those enrolled had died by December 2010.
Wolk’s team found that people who had reported eating no fruit or vegetables at the start of the study were 53 percent more likely to die during the follow-up period than those who got their five daily servings.
