If you need a reason for eating more fruit and vegetables, consider this: recent research strongly suggests that it can significantly reduce your risk of suffering an ischaemic stroke (the type caused by interrupted blood flow to the brain). In fact, scientific sleuthing indicates that people who eat 5-6 servings of fruits and vegetables each day are 31% less likely to fall victim to this type of stroke than those eating fewer than three daily servings (1).

To unravel the relationship between fruit-and-veg intake and stroke, researchers led by Kaumudi Joshipura Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, studied more than 114,000 adults who had participated in two different, high-quality trials. For the Nurses' Health Study, 75,596 women were observed over a period of 14 years, while 38,683 men were followed for eight years in the Health Professionals' Follow-Up Study.

Joshipura's overall analysis showed that each individual serving of fruit or vegetables resulted in a 6% decrease in the risk of ischaemic stroke (2). But he and his co-researchers also found that a fruit-and-vegetable intake of more than six servings per day did not result in any additional reduction in stroke risk. Most protective were citrus fruits and juice (grapefruit, oranges, lemons, limes, tangelos, kumquats, and shaddock), green leafy vegetables and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower). Potatoes, on the other hand, appeared to confer no protection at all.

'There are very few studies that relate fruits and vegetables to cardiovascular disease, even though some of their constituents are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease,'

Dr Joshipura said (1). 'I would hope that this study provides an additional motivation to the public to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables.' One of Joshipura's next projects will take a direct look at the link between fruit and vegetables and myocardial infarctions (heart attacks).

'There have been many recommendations to increase fruit and vegetable intake, and there have been some suggestions that this can be beneficial for stroke,' said Meir Stampfer, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and a member of the research team. More research is needed, said Dr Stampfer, to 'tease out which components of fruit and vegetables are contributory' and which fruits and vegetables are most beneficial.

Doctors currently try to reduce their patients' stroke risk by monitoring blood pressure and recommending lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, boosting physical activity and giving up smoking. Now they'll have another strategy to recommend. 'Some of the constituents of fruits and vegetables, such as antioxidants, folate, and fibre, have been associated with reduced risk of stroke, although it is likely that there may be other (health-promoting) components of which we are not aware,' Dr Joshipura said.

Owen Anderson