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How many fruits and vegetables do you include in your diet on a daily basis? If the answer is a bare minimum, chances are that you are signing yourself up for a possible heart attack and a severe impact on your overall heart health. It is important to ensure that you do keep certain things into consideration when deciding what kind of diet you are going to sign up for.
A new study (R) conducted by researchers from the American Society of Nutrition does suggest that inadequate consumption of fruits and vegetables is often a contributing factor to the millions of death that is being caused around the world. Not only does it affect heart health, it also does impose risks of strokes in several individual as well.
The study did further estimate that 1 in 7 cardiovascular deaths that happen across the world could very well be contributed because of the lack of consumption of adequate amount of fruits and 1 in 12 cardiovascular deaths is predominantly because of the lack of vegetables in the diet.
Statistics and reports do suggest that there were around 1.8 million deaths in the year of 2010 because of the lack of fruit intake in their daily diet. On the contrary, the low vegetable content resulted in around 1 million deaths in the same year. The lack of fruits in the diet was found to be the primal concern in comparison to the vegetable intake.
The impact of the same was also very profound on the countries which were found with the lowest average intake of both the fruits as well as vegetables.
Victoria Miller, a postdoctoral researcher at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who is also the lead author of the study found that the fruits and the vegetables are the modifiable components in the diet which does have impacts on the preventable deaths that occur globally.
The main goal of the study was to indicate the kind of importance of the inclusion of both the fruits and vegetables throughout the world to help lead a better and healthier life like no other. The findings of the study were presented in the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition which was held from June 8th till June 11th, 2019.
Both fruits and vegetables are an integral part of our diet and are loaded with good amounts of fiber, potassium, antioxidants, magnesium and even phenolics which have very important impacts in helping get rid of the excess cholesterol and even lower the blood pressure incessantly.
Apart from these nutrients, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is also attributed towards the better improvement of the good bacteria in the gut that further improves the overall digestion in the body. Not just that, the people who do consume less of the fruits and vegetables have been found to also be obese as gain consistent weight which is yet another factor that does involve in worse heart health.
Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who is also the senior author of the study suggested saying that the global nutrition priorities emphasise their focus more on the necessary amount of calorie intake and even supplementing the body with the necessary vitamins and cutting down the excess consumption of the sugar and salt.
These specific findings further do emphasise the need to increase the availability along with the consumption of the protective foods in the diet including fruits, vegetables as well as pulses and legumes which have been found to have an amazing impact on the overall global health.
Focusing on the dietary guidelines as well as the studies conducted on varying cardiovascular risks, the researchers did find that 300 gms of fruits and 400 gms of vegetables and legumes on a daily basis is necessary for the optimal overall heart health of an individual.
The researchers did conduct diet surveys and emphasised on the food availability data representing 113 countries which is 82% of the world’s population. They did combine this available data with data representing the causes and the death in each country with association with the inadequate amount of fruits and vegetables.
From the collected data and the reassertive assessment of the same, the researchers did find that the suboptimal consumption of fruits did result in 1.3 million deaths because of stroke and around 520,000 deaths because coronary heart disease in the year of 2010.
On the contrary, the suboptimal consumption of vegetables was found to result in 200,000 deaths because of stroke and 800,000 deaths because of the coronary heart disease.
The problems and the impacts of this was the maximum on the countries with the lowest fruits and vegetable intake like that of South Asia as well as East Asia and even the sub-Saharan Africa. The same was predominantly associated with the strokes that many tend to be affected with.
The same problems in the United States have been found to impact around 82,000 cardiovascular deaths because of low vegetable intake while the numbers are 57,000 deaths because of the low fruits intake. Lack of proper heart health is designated as the number one cause of death in the United States.
Heart health does depend on a number of factors, from the kind of lifestyle that one leads to the kind of diet that one does adhere to. It is important to ensure that you do keep the same into account and not let it get the best of you on the whole.
