Eating 5 servings (about 400 g) of fruits and vegetables daily
Original: eternity4719 · source details
Original author: eternity4719 · Chinese source: · English adaptation: parveen0029. Translation and grade notes ↗
Bibliographic titles are retained in their original language.
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Cost and benefit at a glance
- Check the cost Cost ↓
- It costs only a few to a dozen yuan per day. You also need to spend some time washing and chopping them. The real challenge is buying and eating the required am…
- Then the source benefit Benefit ↓
- When pooling data from multiple longitudinal studies (without subgroup analysis), an additional 200 g of fruits and vegetables per day is linked to a 10% drop in death risk (RR 0.9…
In plain terms
Consuming an extra 200 g of fruits and vegetables each day lowers the risk of death by roughly 10% during the same period. People who eat 5 servings daily have a mortality risk that is about 13% lower than those eating just 2 servings. Eating more than that does not bring any further reduction in risk.
This guide's cartoon · show illustration
Enlarge illustrationOriginal illustration with Chinese lettering; the English dialogue is below. Humour is a reading aid, not evidence.
English dialogue
- I take health seriously!
- What does your average day look like?
Cost: what it takes
It costs only a few to a dozen yuan per day. You also need to spend some time washing and chopping them. The real challenge is buying and eating the required amount every single day.
Benefit: what the source reports
When pooling data from multiple longitudinal studies (without subgroup analysis), an additional 200 g of fruits and vegetables per day is linked to a 10% drop in death risk (RR 0.90). This protective effect persists up to 800 g per day. A combined analysis of two large US longitudinal studies and 26 other studies shows that people eating 5 servings daily have a mortality risk that is about 13% lower than those eating only 2 servings (HR 0.87). The optimal mix is 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables; any extra amount beyond that does not lower the risk further.
Conditions, limits and disagreements
Eating 5 servings is sufficient; there is no need to reach 10 servings, as both studies agree on this point. Keep in mind that these studies are purely observational, so confounding factors are inevitable: people who eat more vegetables and fruit tend to have higher incomes, better education, and more physical activity than others. Therefore, the reported 10% risk reduction represents the upper limit of the true effect.
Original references
Original bibliographic titles and links are preserved; some titles are in Chinese.
Aune D 等 (2017). Fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. International Journal of Epidemiology. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyw319；Wang DD 等 (2021). Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Mortality: Results From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies of US Men and Women and a Meta-Analysis of 26 Cohort Studies. Circulation. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.048996
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