Could simply adding more fruits and vegetables to your plate help brighten your mood? New research suggests that increasing your intake of these nutritional powerhouses may offer a surprising benefit: a potential reduction in depressive symptoms. Researchers from the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at the University of New South Wales in Australia have uncovered a link between higher fruit and vegetable consumption and lower levels of depression in a large study spanning multiple countries.
Read on to discover the key findings and learn how incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet could contribute to improved mental well-being.
How was the study conducted?
The study involved twins aged 45 and older from four countries: Australia, Denmark, Sweden, and the USA. Participants were asked to report how often they ate fruits and vegetables through food frequency questionnaires, which were standardized across all the groups. Researchers also tracked their depression symptoms at the start of the study and during follow-up visits using reliable depression assessment tools.
Over a period of up to 11 years, the researchers explored how fruit and vegetable consumption affected changes in depression symptoms. They took into account various factors that could influence the results, such as age, sex, education, whether the person lived alone, body mass index (BMI), physical health, and cognitive ability. However, they didn’t have data on physical activity, so it couldn’t be factored into the analysis.
What did the study find?
After analyzing information from 3,483 participants, the study finds that for fruit, people who ate a lot of it showed a small improvement in their depression symptoms compared to those who ate little fruit. There was no noticeable difference for those who ate a moderate amount of fruit.
When it came to vegetables, both moderate and high consumption were linked to a reduction in depression symptoms over time, with stronger benefits seen in those who ate a lot of vegetables compared to those who ate very few.
What do the study’s findings mean?
While the benefits observed were modest, the study adds to the growing evidence that eating more fruits and vegetables may help reduce depression symptoms. Specifically, people who ate a lot of fruit (2.1 servings/day) showed a 1.6% reduction in depressive symptoms compared to those who ate very little fruit (0.3 servings/day). For vegetables, those with a high intake (2.0 servings/day) experienced a 1.5% reduction in depressive symptoms compared to those who ate fewer vegetables (0.5 servings/day).
However, even those in the “high intake” group were still eating much less than the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. For example, participants in the two large Scandinavian groups ate less than half of the World Health Organization’s recommendation of five servings per day. It’s unclear what would happen if participants increased their intake to meet these guidelines. Additionally, since most participants had relatively low depression symptoms to begin with, future research focusing on people with clinically diagnosed depression may reveal more about the strength of these findings.
The exact reasons behind these benefits are still being studied, but it’s likely that the high levels of fiber, vitamins, and micronutrients in fruits and vegetables help reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, both of which have been linked to depression. Growing research on the gut microbiome suggests that eating more fruits and vegetables could improve gut health, which in turn may help protect the brain from oxidative damage.