Fruit Consumption Cuts CVD Risk by Up to 40 Percent

Daily fruit consumption cuts the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by up to 40%, according to research presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Barcelona on September 1, 2014 by Dr. Huaidong Du from Oxford, UK. The findings from the seven-year follow-up study of nearly 0.5 million people in the China Kadoorie Biobank found that the more fruit people ate, the more their risk of CVD declined. Dr. Du said: "CVD, including ischemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, is the leading cause of death worldwide. Improving diet and lifestyle is critical for CVD risk reduction in the general population, but the large majority of this evidence has come from western countries and hardly any from China." She added: "China has a different pattern of CVD, with stroke as the main cause compared to western countries where IHD is more prevalent. Previous studies have combined ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke probably due to the limited number of stroke cases in their datasets. Given their different physiology and risk factors, we have conducted the first large prospective study on the association of fruit with subtypes of stroke in Chinese adults from both rural and urban areas." The current study included 451,681 participants with no history of CVD and not on anti-hypertensive treatment at baseline from the China Kadoorie Biobank conducted in 10 different areas of China, 5 rural and 5 urban. Habitual consumption of fruit was recorded at baseline according to five categories: never, monthly, 1-3 days per week, 4-6 days per week, and daily. Over the seven-year follow-up period there were 19,300 cases of IHD and 19,689 strokes (14,688 ischemic and 3,562 hemorrhagic). Some 18% of participants consumed fruit daily and 6.3% never consumed fruit.