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Fruits & Vegetables Slash Strokes

Eating five to six servings of fruit or vegetables daily is enough to lower stroke risk by 30 percent in middle-aged people, according to a study by Kaumudi Joshipura, Ph.D., of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Cambridge, Mass.

The study tracked the food habits of 75,596 women aged 34 to 59 from the Harvard Nurses Health Study for 14 years and 38,683 men aged 40 to 75 from the Health Professionals' Follow-up Study for nine years. During the study, 366 women and 204 men had strokes. Food habits were determined by food frequency questionnaires.

Subjects who ate five to six daily servings of vegetables and fruit had 30 percent less chance of having a stroke compared to those who ate two and a half to three servings a day. Eating more than six daily servings provided no additional protection, but eating just one extra serving of fruit or vegetables daily reduced stroke risk by 6 percent. Cruciferous vegetables, green leafy vegetables and citrus juice provided the most protection.

The authors speculate that stroke protection might be conferred by the folic acid or potassium present in fruit and vegetables. People who took multivitamins experienced little or no protective effect from their diet, suggesting the supplements might contain the same effective agents found in the fruit and vegetables.

This research is significant because it is the first large, well-conducted study to examine the link between produce consumption and stroke risk.

—Journal of the American Medical Association
1999 Oct 6;292(13):1233-9.