Hi!

I am a sportsdietitian and am currently dabbling the idea to write short summary advise for scientific nutritional research. This idea was sprouted because I work for several gyms and one of the complaints I have received a lot was how hard to find and obtuse research reports are. This is following several seminars and walk-ins where it became clear that people have trouble to determine whether certain research is (enough) reason to alter their intakes and/or behavior. It's difficult to name a nuanced example of that, so take this hyperbole one: when research came out that certain sugars might play an important part in developing hypertension, the conclusion made by the client was: 'therefor, I am not allowed to eat anything that has sugar in it'.

It appears difficult to put research into perspective. So as a trial, I am going to write short descriptions on specific pieces of research and draw a conclusion from it, which will be added in the email chains and websites for those gyms. This won't start until summer though, so I am going to just get in the habit of doing it, once a week or so. Not necessarily just the newest, off the presses research. Just whatever I find interesting and think is relevant for my clients.

So, first up:

Quantity of fruit and vegetable consumption for health

In an effort to establish if and how much fruit and vegetables contribute to health, a cohort study followed 65.226 people over a 7.7 year period and asked about their fruit and vegetable intake, among other baseline questions such as if they were smokers. The researchers gathered information about their development of cancer, cardiovascular disease and mortality.

At the result, 6.7% of the study's population had died (4399 deaths). The study found that fruit and vegetables yield effects beneficial to health incrementally, and higher than the current daily recommended levels. There was a correlation between the studied deaths and a lower intake than recommended, but consumption kept giving beneficial health effects up to 560 grams per day for non-smokers and smokers showing benefits from greater amounts than that.

It was noted that effects were higher as vegetables made up a larger amount than fruit in overall consumption. The data also showed that frozen fruits and vegetables showed less beneficial effects and sometimes even hazardous health effects. It was noted in the discussion that this was a surprising result, since other studies have shown frozen vegetables in particular to be as healthy and certainly no less healthy, than their fresh counterparts. They theorize their methods of data gathering did not account for certain factors when discussing this particular finding.
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To conclude, specifically vegetables but also fruit are very beneficial for your health, but the ceiling of their benefits is much higher than the average recommended intake in most countries. In most western countries, the average person does not even reach the daily recommended intake however, so the thing to take away here is that you would likely benefit from increasing your average daily vegetable intake greatly, including frozen vegetables (as long as they are purely vegetable; spinach a la creme is an example of a frozen vegetable product to avoid).

Source:

Oyebode, O., Gordon-Dseagu, V., Walker, A., Mindell, J.S. (2014) Fruit and vegetable consumption and all-cause, cancer and CVD mortality. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.