Eat Fruits to Boost Mental Health and Well-being: Study

Eat fruits every day to stay mentally fit and healthy, advises a research.

Fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins, fiber, minerals and anti-oxidants that help keep diseases and illnesses like high blood pressure, heart problems and stroke at bay. Time and again, health experts stress on the benefits of consuming generous amount of fruits (Five to seven serving daily) to boost life expectancy and defer the aging process. A new study by the University of Warwick's Medical School discovered a relation between one's mental well-being and regular fruit consumption.

Their findings were based on the data of 14,000 individuals aged above 16 from the Health Survey for England. The survey also recorded other variables like smoking and drinking habits, obesity and socio-economic status of the respondents. Nearly 33.5 percent of those with good mental health reportedly ate five or more servings of fruits compared to 6.8 percent of Brits who ate less than one serving. Almost 31.4 percent of subjects who claimed to be mentally healthy ate at least three to four portions of fruits and vegetables while, only 28.4 percent ate about one or two portion daily, reports the Medical News Today.

The study used the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) to evaluate the subject's true mental status and rated 15 percent of participants with high level of mental well-being, another 15 percent with exceedingly poor mental health and 16 to 84 percent of them with moderate well-being.

"Along with smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption was the health-related behaviour most consistently associated with both low and high mental wellbeing. These novel findings suggest that fruit and vegetable intake may play a potential role as a driver, not just of physical, but also of mental wellbeing in the general population," said Saverio Stranges, study author and researcher at the University of Warwick, in a news release.

"Mental illness is hugely costly to both the individual and society, and mental wellbeing underpins many physical diseases, unhealthy lifestyles and social inequalities in health. It has become very important that we begin to research the factors that enable people to maintain a sense of wellbeing. Our findings add to the mounting evidence that fruit and vegetable intake could be one such factor and mean that people are likely to be able to enhance their mental wellbeing at the same time as preventing heart disease and cancer," said Sarah Stewart-Brown, co-author and professor at the University, in the news release.

More information is available online in the British Medical Journal Open.