Fruit, vegetable consumption tied to ‘progressively shorter survival and higher mortality rates’

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Stone Hearth News

                                  Fruit and vegetable consumption and all-cause mortality: a dose-response analysis 1,2,3; First published June 26, 2013, doi: 10.3945/​ajcn.112.056119 Am J Clin Nutr August 2013 ajcn.056119 Andrea Bellavia, Susanna C Larsson, Matteo Bottai, Alicja Wolk, and Nicola Orsini; Author Affiliations: 1 From the Units of Nutritional Epidemiology (AB, SCL, AW, and NO) and Biostatistics (AB, MB, and NO), Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Author Notes: 2 Supported in part by a Young Scholar Award from the Karolinska Institutet’s Strategic Program in Epidemiology, the Swedish Medical Society (SLS-250271), and the Swedish Research Council; 3 Address correspondence to N Orsini, Unit of Nutritional Epidemiology, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, PO Box, SE-171 77, Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: nicola.orsini@ki.se.

Abstract

Background: The association between fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption and overall mortality has seldom been investigated in large cohort studies. Findings from the few available studies are inconsistent.

 Objective: The objective was to examine the dose-response relation between FV consumption and mortality, in terms of both time and rate, in a large prospective cohort of Swedish men and women.

 Design: FV consumption was assessed through a self-administrated questionnaire in a population-based cohort of 71,706 participants (38,221 men and 33,485 women) aged 45–83 y. We performed a dose-response analysis to evaluate 10th survival percentile differences (PDs) by using Laplace regression and estimated HRs by using Cox regression.

 Results: During 13 y of follow-up, 11,439 deaths (6803 men and 4636 women) occurred in the cohort. In comparison with 5 servings FV/d, a lower consumption was progressively associated with shorter survival and higher mortality rates. Those who never consumed FV lived 3 y shorter (PD: −37 mo; 95% CI: −58, −16 mo) and had a 53% higher mortality rate (HR: 1.53; 95% CI: 1.19, 1.99) than did those who consumed 5 servings FV/d. Consideration of fruit and vegetables separately showed that those who never consumed fruit lived 19 mo shorter (PD: −19 mo; 95% CI: −29, −10 mo) than did those who ate 1 fruit/d. Participants who consumed 3 vegetables/d lived 32 mo longer than did those who never consumed vegetables (PD: 32 mo; 96% CI: 13, 51 mo).

Conclusion: FV consumption <5 servings/d is associated with progressively shorter survival and higher mortality rates. The Swedish Mammography Cohort and the Cohort of Swedish Men were registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01127698 and NCT01127711, respectively.