Eating more fruit and vegetables 'improves mental wellbeing'

https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/eating-more-fruit-and-veg-improves-mental-wellbeing/

153 171 7 years ago

wbronitsky3• 7 years ago

No, eating more fruit and vegetables is correlated with improved mental wellbeing. In fact, the study, even though it was longitudinal, did not dissect if increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten across a lifespan causes increased happiness even though they could have! The headline, and TFA, are like saying having more TVs per capita causes fewer babies to die. They are both obviously correlative, and clearly not causational.

If the UK is anything like the US, there are some obvious confounding factors, with the most obvious being that poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables, and that poor people are actively persecuted in our society. Hence you get studies that output the above headline.

This isn't really news people.

dageshi• 7 years ago

If the UK is anything like the US, there are some obvious confounding factors, with the most obvious being that poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables, and that poor people are actively persecuted in our society.

I'd put convenience above cost in most cases, there are worse but more convenient foods easily available that store for longer, require less preparation and in terms of fat/sugar adjusted taste buds taste better.

fratlas2• 7 years ago

Can't wait until someone creates healthy, long shelf life food that is cheap, and tastes OK. Would be a game changer.

neetdeth• 7 years ago

This study was peer reviewed, and neither the researchers nor the reviewers are drooling morons as you seem to imply. From the article:

"Based on prior research, we included a rich set of commonly observed predictors of well-being as control variables (see Dolan et al., 2008 for a review of this literature). These include socio-demographic variables such as age, household income, gender, relationship status, number of children and education. Such controls are important as it is possible that fruit and vegetable consumption would co-vary with, for example, income – someone becoming richer and as a result enjoying higher well-being scores and changing their food related behaviours. We also controlled for the presence of long-standing health conditions as well as health and lifestyle related behaviours such as walking frequency and smoking behaviour – again potential confounders that could bias any estimates of the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and well-being."

While I do think a lot of research in the social sciences is of questionable value, there's no need to shoot from the hip just for the snarky HN comment.

ppod• 7 years ago

It's in the summary too:

They took account of many potential confounding factors, including age, income, marital status, number of children, employment status, smoking status, exercise levels (measured by days each week on which they walked for at least 10 minutes at a time) and whether they had a longstanding health condition.
The study has limitations, however. The most important is that this type of observational study can't tell us whether the fruit and veg consumption actually causes improved mental wellbeing.

While the longitudinal design and the adjustment for potential confounding factors helps to make the results more robust, there may be something else unaccounted for at play here. The possibility that people who feel happier are more likely to choose healthier food, for example, cannot be ruled out.

Its a responsible and cautious summary.

mkumm62• 7 years ago

It doesn't really matter if it's peer-reviewed or how many variables they controlled for. It's still an observational study and not a randomized controlled trial.

DanBC• 7 years ago

The article says this.

The difficulty is in knowing whether fruit and veg is actually the cause of their improved mental health. Researchers took account of factors such as people's age, income levels, marital and employment status and general health, and compared the same people's results over time. This approach helped to make the results more reliable. But we can't be sure that the results don't show, for example, that people eat more fruit and veg when they feel more cheerful, rather than the other way around.

chrisco2553• 7 years ago

Fruits and veggies are among the cheapest items in any grocery store in the United States. And we provide food stamps to poor people for this very reason.

iflint2• 7 years ago

This needs to be said more often. Money is not the problem, the time needed to shop and cook as well as the discipline necessary to consistently do so are the largest factors.

buzzdenver3• 7 years ago

Fruits and veggies are among the most expensive items in any grocery store in the United States per calories, which is the metric that really counts.

munk-a3• 7 years ago

Home cooked fruits and veggies end up getting a lot more expensive when you factor in frequency of shopping needed to maintain a stock and time required to cook. I applaud everyone who manages to cook every day and I strive to do so, but both of the people in my relationship work full time and waste about three hours a day commuting, round it up to about twelve hours a day lost to work - cooking and then collapsing after that is un-affordable without getting lost in a spiral of depression.

We cook and eat well on the weekends, we try to reserve food for the week and I continue to be amazed by people worse off than us that are working as much as we are _and_ a part time job on top of it.

mancerayder2• 7 years ago

By what measure, though? What does "cheaper" mean here in terms of unit to unit comparison?

For those interested in protein, or feeling full, chicken is one of the cheapest things you can possibly buy. In NYC, fresh vegetables, and (god forbid) organic, is one of the most expensive things you can buy. In my experience, buying ingredients for a full salad with relatively fresh ingredients is almost as expensive as going to a moderately priced restaurant. It's crazy.

If what I said sounds wishy-washy, it's because no one's defined what a unit of animal product versus a unit of fruit and vegetables is, when doing this price comparison.

It might just be because the weather here doesn't give us Mediterranean-like weather conditions and a lot of stuff has to come from places like Mexico and California (it seems from what the local grocery stores are stocking).

gregcrv• 7 years ago

But most of them live in food deserts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

open-source-ux• 7 years ago

"...people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables"

Fruit and vegetables are cheap in the UK. To look at prices, just visit any UK supermarket's website (e.g. asda.com, tesco.com, sainsburys.com etc). Lidl and Aldi can be cheaper, but often the cheapest of all are small independent grocery stores.

bellerose• 7 years ago

I agree & speculate that mental wellbeing has everything to do with finances. Including if a person develops a mental illness; of course there will be cases where the person is financially well off. Approximately 75% of suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where rates of poverty are high. sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454768/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3431736/ https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html

tiew9Vii• 7 years ago

I never get the argument it’s more expensive to eat fruit and veg, I find it far cheaper.

Sure go to your local supermarket it’s way overpriced and expensive. Go to your local green grocer or market and by seasonal produce, it’s cheap, really cheap. Even the stores like Aldi and Lidl are pretty cheap if you are short on time to go shopping round your local green grocery / market.

Where fruit and vegetables are expensive is time, you have to prepare a meal vs putting a ready meal in the microwave for a few minutes.

fourmii• 7 years ago

Not sure where you're from, but in the US, a fast food meal is far cheaper than buying produce from grocery stores. That is if you can find a nearby grocery store to begin with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

nradov3• 7 years ago

Canned vegetables can be just as healthy as fresh, and common items like green beans and peas are super cheap.

Jommi• 7 years ago

How are you not thinking about differences between cities and countries?

dana321• 7 years ago

Eating fruit and raw vegetables for me does make me feel good and brings about a feel of wellbeing. Whether thats the sugar or the other nutrients that they bring i don't know.

Its not really news, i agree, but to a lot of people it is.

I agree that correlation is not causation in a lot of cases, but in this case its kind of true but it depends.. Raw is a lot better than cooked.

Its also the difference between real physical wellbeing from nutrients/sugars, and percieved psychological wellbeing from eating certain foods.

Apple pie might be more of a psychological wellbeing than raw apples which is more physiological, although cooking can bring out different types of nutrients in some cases.

sonnyblarney3• 7 years ago

"with the most obvious being that poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables"

This is simply not true.

In fact, the least expensive foods are fresh vegetables.

Aside from the homeless, most poor people have some means to cook as well, giving them access to an astonishing variety of meals.

Meat, milk, cheese, often expensive.

Fruit and veg is the cheapest thing in the store.

Processed/fast foods are more than likely the culprit in so many ways, it seems wherever you are in America, you're arms length from something massively processed, salty, fully of fats/sugars etc..

Same for Canada.

miguelrochefort4• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure fruits and vegetables (with some exceptions) are more expensive when you factor in calories and nutrients.

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/applying-protein-per-doll...

barry-cotter2• 7 years ago

If the UK is anything like the US, there are some obvious confounding factors, with the most obvious being that poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables, and that poor people are actively persecuted in our society.

In that case the U.K. is nothing like the US because frozen vegetables are cheap, convenient and easy to cook. If you don’t want to eat vegetables that’s fine but in Europe it’s not going to be because they’re unavailable. A vegetarian diet is cheaper than an omnivorous one.

jSully24• 7 years ago

“...cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables”

Worse than “can not afford”, they do not have access to fruit and veggis to start with. Do a search on “food desert” or “poor access fruit”. It is not good.

black-tea• 7 years ago

poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables,

Why is this statement so persistent? Vegetables are the cheapest food there is. Lentils have long been a staple of students. Poor people are poor because they are bad with money and make poor decisions. That is why they don't eat vegetables.

wbronitsky3• 7 years ago

Food deserts exist. This also assumes that time is free, which it is not. If someone has two jobs and lives in a food desert, buying and making their own food becomes a burden and very costly.

Poor people are poor because they are bad with money and make poor decisions.

you seem like a hateful person. i dont understand how, faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, how you can hold this in your heart. I truly hope you don't believe this.

but seriously. you are discounting family wealth, education, racism, and just plain bad luck. your assertion is so hateful it would almost be comical if there weren't so many people pushing this hateful and destructive ideology

porpoisely2• 7 years ago

No. Eating a balanced meal improves mental well being. A balance of meat, veg, fruit, etc.

These "studies" are so intentionally deceiving since they take lower income people who gorge themselves on processed junk and them claim "eating more fruit and veg" helps. You could also say "eating more meat" would be beneficial as opposed to processed junk.

I'm disappointed that so much of diet "science" is so corrupted by politics and business agenda. But that's been it's history since kellog's "eat cereal" nonsense and "an apple a day" PR stunt.

There is nothing inherently good about fruits or vegs. An "apple a day" isn't going to keep the doctor away. And vegetables aren't inherently "healthy food". If you only eat apples and vegetables, you will deteriorate physically and mentally and maybe even die.

shafyy3• 7 years ago

You don't need to eat meat to be healthy (mentally or physically).

porpoisely2• 7 years ago

Yes you do. I supposed it is possible to be "healthy" on an all meat or all veg diet, but that's not optimal. Especially for veg diet since they need tons of supplements and/or have to track down all kinds of exotic veg, nuts, etc to stay sane and healthy.

It's like walking on all fours. Sure I can get from point A to point B on all fours, but it's not optimal. We were built to walk on our legs. The same goes for food. We were built to be omnivores.

The fact that no human society ( or pre human society ) existed on an all meat or all veg diet should be a dead giveaway.

Frankly, as a one time vegan myself, veganism should be labeled an eating disorder. Human beings should be eating a balanced diet.

toomanybeersies6• 7 years ago

Most Americans eat too much meat, even if they are eating whole foods instead of processed junk.

sridca10• 7 years ago

I see that you, like most of people here, have gulped the vegan propaganda hook, line and sinker.

http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/

shadykiller• 7 years ago

Shouldn't we classify fruits and vegetables separately ? Modern fruit is a huge deviation from the older times, they're almost as sweet as candy. Plus they're always available unlike the seasonal availability in the past.

twic2• 7 years ago

This article is from a UK source, and the fruit here is mostly profoundly unripe, and about as sweet as wet newspaper.

jwagenet• 7 years ago

I agree with the sentiment, but presumably the study was conducted using modern varieties of fruit.

dawhizkid2• 7 years ago

Not if you believe Jordan and Mikaela Peterson...https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peter...

hirundo2• 7 years ago

Neither of them recommend their diet for the general public. They think it works for themselves because of their particular auto-immune issues.

dawhizkid2• 7 years ago

I don't think that's true. It's not that they don't recommend the diet, it's that they are very careful to say that it works for them and that they have no evidence or expertise to say if it will work for someone else.

The auto-immune benefit was just one of many benefits they claimed. Both also suffered from depression and they said those symptoms went away as well.

fucking_tragedy4• 7 years ago

There's no evidence that either of them follow their "all beef diet", but there's ample evidence that they charge $120+/hr for consultations based on this diet[1].

[1] https://mikhailapeterson.com/consultations/

sridca10• 7 years ago

It is pathetic that HN childishly downvotes you instead of engaging in a fruitful discussion.

For an unbiased review of foods, go here: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/

astura6• 7 years ago

Jordon Peterson claims drinking a glass of apple cider caused him to not be able to sleep for 25 days straight and his daughter claimed that putting pepper on a steak caused joint pain, acne and anxiety for three weeks. But she can drink voldka and bourbon.

That sort of batshit crazy magical thinking isn't worth discussing. Period.

The article the GP posted has the money quote:

The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.

agumonkey• 7 years ago

When ill I couldn't eat anything beside raw food. Anything with just too much sugar (one biscuit was enough) would make me faint.

So I ate raw lettuce; raw tomato etc etc

It changes your perception of eating. Less flashy but much more gentle and stimulating at the same time.

boxcarr• 7 years ago

I'm a bit alarmed. We have fruit, but not veg. Hopefully, vegetables are a good substitute for veg.

integrate-this• 7 years ago

Eating more fruit and vegetables. Spell the whole damn word. It takes less than a second to finish typing that. I saw 'thru' in an academic journal yesterday as well. Drives me insane.

theonemind• 7 years ago

"Veg" seems used more in British English. As an American, it never really sounds right to me, and I usually see/hear it from UK or Australian sources. Just an idiomatic difference, I think.

astura6• 7 years ago

"Veg" is a British term.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 7 years ago

I'm kinda with you on this one. "Veg" isn't too bad, but "veggies" can go to hell.

synsynack• 7 years ago

Not eating food, aka fasting, improves mental wellbeing.

marricks• 7 years ago

Study seemed to take a lot into account, is it really that outrageous of a finding? Fruit and vegetables have a lot of known benefits.

We evolved from apes where most of our group are frugivores or herbivores. Hell, if our bread wasn’t fortified with things like niacin and vitamin c most people would have scurvy and tons of other crap wrong with them. We probably should get more of our vitamins from the source!

futureastronaut• 7 years ago

The keto crowd seems almost like a cult sometimes, there is pride and defensiveness. Veganism isn't the only adopted diet people get attached to. Like that millionaire ex-Googler's blog post the other day, sinking most time into an "is it keto" app. It wouldn't have been out of place on The Onion.

ecshafer• 7 years ago

Keto eats vegetables, nuts and also berries in limited amounts. Doing keto spinach, kale, broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, avocados, squash and many other non starchy vegetables are core.

jkahrs595• 7 years ago

Lots of people in here making excuses as to why they don't eat more fruits and vegetables.

Here's a write-up with sources: https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/09/04/how-many-servings-of-f...

baby2• 7 years ago

they are too difficult to peel.

pyridines• 7 years ago

Lots of fruits and vegetables don't require peeling! Though they do require washing.

vokep2• 7 years ago

thats one of the most awesome aspects of them, they are self-packaged. Most of the benefits of plastic, with none of the downsides. The only additional downside it might have that plastic doesn't is it decays and smells bad if youdon't throw it away (but thats ok because its ok to throw it away!)

nradov3• 7 years ago

I can't tell if you're serious or joking?

siedes• 7 years ago

"If the results are true, this gives another reason to boost your fruit and veg intake. We already know eating these foods is good for physical health, and this study suggests they can improve your mental health, too."

I feel like this is nothing really groundbreaking news. I don't have any scientific sources or proofs so maybe I'm retarded, but it was always obvious to me that physical and mental health are largely interlinked. People who exercise regularly are more likely to have better mental health, perhaps even regardless of their diet (counting out extreme cases). People who make an effort to eat more fruit and veg to improve their physical health generally are also practicing the mental discipline needed to stick to a long-term plan/goal, which will mean better mental wellbeing as a result.

Will this study do any good to motivate people to eat more healthily? The cynic in me tells me no, because everyone already knows fruit and veg are good, yet many will still refuse to incorporate them into their diet and choose to eat convenient junk instead. The people who are already eating fruit and veg already know it is making a positive impact on their health, I guess this is another form of confirmation for them so they can continue?

anonuser123456• 7 years ago

On a recent Peter Attia podcast he made an offhanded comment that any deviation from SAD (Standard American Diet) seems to improve health. So probably related to that.

SmallBets2• 7 years ago

I'm surprised so many still categorize fruits and vegetables together in these studies and in general thinking, given all we know now about sugar.

Fruits in terms of calories are essentially sugar, and despite the fiber, more than 1-2 a day will start to impact insulin, fat storage etc. negatively for most people. Especially fructose-heavy fruit.

Non-starchy vegetables are not nearly as sugar or calorie dense, can be eaten in much higher volume with little effect, and as such should be thought of much differently than fruit.

(non-avocado) Fruit falls more in the dessert/candy category IMO.

baby2• 7 years ago

I think there is more to that, as I've never met someone fat who also eats a lot of fruits. My intuition is that you either feel filled more quickly with fruits, or too much fruit gives you the shit so you avoid it, or it hypes you so you consumes more energy?

avinium• 7 years ago

It's incredibly easy to overlook the calorific content in fruit - I was recently taking in at least 1000 calories per day from bananas/stone fruits/etc.

My rule of thumb is for vegetables to form the bulk of my intake (in terms of volume), with 1-2 cups of fruit per day as "dessert".

Basically, I treat most non-starchy vegetables as "free" - eat as many as you want. It's a mistake to think that fruit/starchy vegetables (pumpkin, potato, etc) are in the same category.

itas• 7 years ago

Fruit _juice_ is more problematic. Drinks release a large amount of sugar very quickly into your system, they also don't "fill you up" and it is hard to quantify exactly how much you have consumed, meaning that people consume more sugar than they intended to. Drinks are directly absorbed into your gut without requiring digestion, and you can also drink fruit much faster than you could ever chew the same amount of whole fruit.

So yes, do avoid fruit juice, soda, smoothies, alcoholic beverages, ice cream, etc; but avoiding whole fruit is probably premature optimisation.

bhrgunatha• 7 years ago

I like the rough guideline to change from eating vegetables/juicing fruit to juicing vegetables/eating fruit.

cageface2• 7 years ago

The studies don't back this up one bit:

https://nutritionfacts.org/2017/02/23/can-you-eat-too-much-f...

The fiber makes all the difference in the world when it comes to metabolism of sugars.

3131s• 7 years ago

Anecdotal, but I have eaten 5-10 mangoes a day, among other fruits, for long periods of time and remained at 8-10% body fat. I pay close attention to what I eat and how it affects my body composition, and I stopped worrying about eating too much fruit long ago.

SmallBets2• 7 years ago

The 2 main studies in this article are not very instructive -

1 was done on diabetics with groups eating more or less fruit, but no mention is made of what the rest of their diet was in relation to sugar/carbs. It mentions no impact to their weight or diabetes, but would their diabetes + weight have improved by cutting carbs, sugar & fruit?

The other study was n=17 so not very solid.

What's more interesting is research where fruit, sugar, and carbs are removed entirely or almost entirely (keto). T2 Diabetes is commonly reversed and weight loss adherence increases.

fizixer• 7 years ago

I don't get fruits. As much as I love them, I don't see why you need somewhat reduced nutrition (compared to vegetables) and way more sugar.

Antioxidants have been a failure of nutritional science, in the same vein as the high-grain diet. That means vitamin C has been way overrated. In fact, it has better uses in skin care but that's a different story.

Can anyone comment?

As long as you get enough fiber, eat plenty of vegetables (and dry fruit like almonds, nuts, etc), and in general follow a low-carb diet, fruit intake is nothing more than a psychological boost, and makes you nutritionally worse off. Change my view.

kovrik2• 7 years ago

Sugar is not bad per se. The issue of sugar in processed foods, candy etc. is that it absorbs quickly and causes blood sugar spikes. This is bad.

Fruits and vegetables have fiber, which slows sugar absorption, hence no blood sugar spikes. Of course, if you eat 10 bananas daily, then it is not healthy.

Also, some vegetables contain lots of sugar too.

cageface2• 7 years ago

There is so much misinformation out there about diet it's truly mindboggling. Antioxidants play a crucial role in maintaining health. They just don't work that well if you take them in purified form as a supplement. Consuming a diet high in natural antioxidants has tons of very well documented benefits. And fruits are one of the best sources of antioxidants, along with a lot of other valuable nutrient.

https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/02/02/the-number-one-global-...

bigbluedots• 7 years ago

Can I take supplements which give the same effect?

starpucks• 7 years ago

Common sense

Eating more fruit and vegetables 'improves mental wellbeing'

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