Eating fruits and vegetables may reduce depression risks, studies suggest

Listen to your mum, when she says ‘Eat your fruits and vegetables’. A recent study has shown a surprising benefit of including fruits and vegetables in your diet.
Along with its numerous benefits, adding fruits and vegetables in your diet could also reduce your risk fo depression over time, according to a new study of twins, led by researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.

The participants were twins aged 45 and above, from across the US, Australia, Denmark, and Sweden. The researchers analyzed survey data on diet and mood from 3,483 individuals, with follow-up periods of up to 11 years. As twins are more similar genetically, the scientists could monitor any differences in their health such as symptoms of depression in this case, could be more likely due to the changes in their diet, exercise, and living conditions.

“Twin pairs share 50-100 percent of their genetic background and when raised together share the same family environment. One of the advantages of the twin design is that it can help address the issue of unwanted factors, such as socioeconomic status early in life, influencing the results,” “geneticist Karen Mather from UNSW said in a release.
The study is published in Scientific Reports.

The researchers were able to find a ‘modest’ difference in depression symptoms between people who had a high fruit and vegetable diet (averaging 2.1 and 2.0 average daily servings respectively), and those with a low fruit and vegetable diet (0.3 and 0.5 average daily servings respectively).

When moderate consumption of vegetables and fruits was compared to low intake, the link to reduced depression was weaker for vegetables and absent for fruits. Also, most of the study participants were still eating below the generally recommended level of vegetable and fruit intake: at least five portions in total per day.

“We found that fruit and vegetable consumption in the two large Scandinavian studies were particularly low, with the average for both being less than half the World Health Organization recommended intake of at least five serves per day. We are unclear what the reduction in depression scores would be if intakes were increased to recommended levels,” Annabel Matison, the lead author of the study, and nutrition scientist from UNSW adds.

“This study’s finding of a protective association between higher fruit and vegetable intake and depressive symptoms is consistent with most prior evidence,” the authors adds in the paper. “The findings present another argument for increasing fruit and vegetable intake in adults over 45 years of age,” says Matison.
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