Eating fruit can minimise heart attacks and strokes

You don’t want to eat exactly the same diet every day because, let’s face it, you probably couldn’t maintain that just out of sheer lack of interest. However, we do know that there are broad guidelines you should follow in your daily eating pattern. One of those guidelines is to eat five serves of legumes and vegetables and two serves of fruit a day. Knowing that is one thing but having the motivation to achieve it is another so you can use the results of a new study to inspire you as far as fruit goes because it has been shown that daily fruit consumption reduces your risk of both heart attack and stroke.

Eating 100 grams of fruit per day was still associated with a 33 per cent reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease. There was also a significant reduction in non-fatal strokes and heart attacks.

The researchers from the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences conducted a nationwide study across China of 500,000 people from urban and rural localities. Subjects were followed for seven years through death records and electronic records maintained by hospitals. The subjects of the study had no history of cardiovascular disease or treatment for high blood pressure when they began the study.

Analysis showed that fruit consumption (mainly apples and oranges) was associated with other factors like education, lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar, and higher income. However, when these other factors were statistically removed from the equation eating 100 grams of fruit per day was still associated with a 33 per cent reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease. There was also a significant reduction in non-fatal strokes and heart attacks.

Based on that you can remind yourself that eating your two pieces of fruit a day will be: well, fruitful.