It’s common knowledge that consuming an adequate amount of fruit and vegetable portions daily fends off a number of health problems.
It’s common knowledge that consuming an adequate amount of fruit and vegetable portions daily fends off a number of health problems. However, new research pinpoints the fact that consuming fruits and vegetables in youth helps your adult heart.
Choosing fruits over sweets that contain processed sugars and added sugar is certainly smart. Keeping one’s body weight in check with such a swift switch isn’t too difficult. A number of vegetables have also proven beneficial for our health. From keeping a healthy liver to a healthy heart to a healthy brain, it’s all in the fruit and vegetable book.
And while it’s intuitive that children’s habits are easier to form when it comes to consuming an adequate amount of fruit and vegetable portions daily, this new research gives you even more reason to put your persuasion skills to work.
Doctor Michael D. Miedema at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and colleagues are the first to suggest there is a correlation between consuming an adequate amount of fruit and vegetable portions daily as a child, teenager or young adult and a healthy heart in later adulthood.
For this research the team recruited a number of 2,506 participants. All had been previously part of the CARDIA study. The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study took off in 1985. Thanks to the participants in this study, researchers were able to collect a large database containing heart health information, lifestyle factors that could affect heart health, demographic data.
The participants recruited for Doctor Miedema’s research were organized in three groups. The first group was composed on those who had reported consuming a large amount of vegetables and fruits. By large we mean that women consumed nine portions daily, while men consumed a daily average of seven portions. The second group included moderate vegetable and fruit consumption.
The third group included participants who reported the lowest intake of both categories. Women reported a daily average intake of 3.3 servings, with men reporting only 2.6 servings.
All participants underwent CT scans to observe their medical conditions. The data, correlated with data from the CARDIA study indicated that participants within the third group had a higher likelihood to develop calcified coronary artery plaque 2. Some already had developed calcified coronary artery plaque 2. Which indicated a higher risk of atherosclerosis, heart attack and coronary heart disease.
The first group of participants did not show the same incidence of calcified coronary artery plaque 2. Which led the researchers to suggest that consuming fruits and vegetables in youth helps your adult heart.
In fact, consuming as much as seven portions of vegetables and fruits daily reduces the risk of heart disease during adult life. The CT scans performed during the study came 20 years after the participants had enrolled in the CARDIA study.
Photo Credits: Pixabay
