Fruit and Macular Degeneration
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
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Many people who are health conscious will increase their vegetable intake tremendous, but will turn their nose up at fruit because vegetables are “better”. The thought is that vegetables provide all of the same benefits as fruit: vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytonutrients, water, fiber, etc without as much sugar. This is pretty much all true, but there are many things about foods that are yet to be discovered, and fruit may just have some benefits of its own, that surpasses that of even the great vegetables.
Enter Age-Related Macular Degeneration. In a 2004 study from the Archives of Ophthalmology (abstract of paper), it was found that fruit out-performed vegetables, antioxidant vitamins and carotenoids in preventing age-related macular degeneration.
The goal of the study was to examine the intake of antioxidant vitamins A, C and E, carotenoids, fruits and vegetables in relation to the development of age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), the primary cause of vision loss in older adults. It also looked at the development of neovascular ARMD, which is a more severe form of the illness.
The study followed over 110,000 men and women at least 50 years old who had no previous diagnosis of ARMD or cancer, for 12 to 18 years.
A total of 464 cases of early ARMD and 316 cases of neovascular ARMD were developed over that 12 to 18 year period (12 years for men, 18 for women). Fruit consumption was found to be inversely correlated with neovascular ARMD. It was found that participants who consumed 3 or more servings of fruit per day were 36% less likely to develop neovascular ARMD than those who consumed less than 1.5 servings per day. Surprisingly intakes of vegetables, carotenoids and vitamins A, C and E were not strongly related to either form of ARMD.
The take home point is not to start just slamming down fruit in place of vegetables, since vegetable are still tremendous foods with tons of other benefits, but to not be afraid to add a few servings of fruit per day into your diet. A few ounces of POM juice at breakfast with a banana, maybe a smoothie recipe later in the day, and a yogurt with some strawberries and blackberries as a nice snack would be a fine example. Three servings per day is definitely not hard and won’t contribute a large amount of sugar to your diet, so go ahead and enjoy Nature’s candy.
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Posted on April 14th, 2010 by Brian St. Pierre
1 Comment
July 1st, 2010 at 3:02 pm
[...] your fruit as well. Brian St Pierre wrote about fruit outperforming vegetables in helping to prevent macular degeneration. This is an important lesson for all of us. Even those of us on a low carb diet still need to [...]