Eating greens when young can save your heart

YOUR mother always told you how important it was to keep eating your greens.

And it seems she was right about their life-long benefits.

For eating lots of fruit and vegetables in your youth protects your heart in middle age, a study has found.Scientists discovered that people who ate large amounts of greens in their early 20s were more than a quarter less likely to have blocked or restricted arteries – which can cause heart attacks and strokes – in their 40s.

The protective effect was especially strong for middle-aged women who had had a high daily intake.

Previous studies have shown that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables reduces heart disease risk among middle-aged adults, but the 20year-long study is the first to examine whether eating better as a young adult could produce a measurable improvement in heart and blood vessel health years later.

The US researchers divided 2,506 young adults into three groups based on their daily con- sumption of fruits and vegetables. Women in the top third ate an average of almost nine servings a day, while men averaged more than seven daily servings.

In the bottom third, women consumed an average of 3.3 servings and men 2.6.

A serving was judged to be one item of fruit or a cup of vegetable. Potatoes were not counted and all servings were based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Twenty years later the participants all underwent a CT scan to check for a potentially life-threatening build up of plaque on the walls of the arteries of their heart, which is associated with a higher risk of coronary disease.

The plaque causes affected arteries to harden and narrow and can dangerously restrict blood flow, which stops our organs functioning properly. If the plaque ruptures it can cause a blood clot which blocks the blood supply to the heart, triggering a heart attack, or else block blood supply to the brain, leading to a stroke.

The scans revealed that those who ate the most fruit and vegetables at the study’s outset had a 26 per cent lower chance of developing calcified coronary artery plaque two decades later compared with those who ate the least, putting them at a lower risk of heart disease.

Factors such as smoking, alcohol intake, levels of physical activity and blood pressure at the start of the study were all taken into account.

The team from the Minneapolis Heart Institute in Minnesota also found that fruit and vegetables had a stronger effect on women’s health than men’s.

Lead author Dr Michael Miedema, the institute’s senior con- sulting cardiologist, said: ‘People shouldn’t assume that they can wait until they’re older to eat healthy – our study suggests that what you eat as a young adult may be as important as what you eat as an older adult.’

He added: ‘Our findings support public health initiatives aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable intake as part of a healthy dietary pattern.’

The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

‘As important as your diet later’