

Alphabet made of many fruits and vegetablesERIE TIMES-NEWS

How many times will we have to be told? Apparently we haven't reached the point when we'll change our habits, but here goes: Eating five servings of fruits and vegetables every day can help us live longer.

That comes from researchers' analysis of 16 studies covering 833,234 people.

Scientists from China and the United States looked at the growing evidence of a connection between produce consumption and heart disease and cancer.

They wanted to quantify the "dose response"-- or how much we need to eat -- in relation with all causes of death, heart disease and cancer.

The average risk of death from all causes was reduced by 5 percent for each additional daily serving of fruits or vegetables; risk of cardiovascular death was reduced by 4 percent for each serving. They did not find the risk of cancer to be appreciably associated with produce consumption.

"There was a threshold around five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, after which the risk of all-cause mortality did not reduce further," the scientists wrote.


-- from wire reports