Produce prescriptions may promote better heart health

Free or discounted fresh fruits and vegetables were link to lowered blood pressure and blood sugar in people living in low-income communities.

It’s no secret that the typical American diet isn’t very healthy. Only about one in 10 American adults eats the recommended daily amount of fruit (1-1/2 to 2 cups) or vegetables (2 to 3 cups). These dietary shortfalls are even more pronounced among people in lower income groups. And the health impacts are substantial: In the United States, poor diets have link with more than 300,000 annual deaths from heart disease and diabetes.

Produce prescriptions enable health care workers to give vouchers for free or discounted produce at grocery stores or farmers’ markets to people living in low-income neighborhoods. A recent study asks whether these programs might help people at risk for heart disease eat more fruits and vegetables, and possibly improve health issues like high blood pressure. While an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies cardiometabolic disease prevention and nutrition security, questions some findings in the study, she notes. That there are lessons to learned here.

What were the findings?

During the produce prescription program, adults ate nearly one additional cup of fruits and vegetables per day; children ate an extra quarter-cup daily. In adults, these changes were associate with lower blood pressure in people. Who had high blood pressure and lower blood sugar in people who had diabetes. The researchers also documented drops in body mass index (BMI) among adults with obesity.

All glowing results, right? Well, maybe not.

“Because of the study’s limitations, including a lack of a comparison group. Which is standard practice in diet studies. Those potential health สมัคร ufabet กับเรา รับโบนัสทันที benefits are hard to prove,” In addition, the investigators relied on statistical techniques to account for high rates of missing data from some programs. Which could also skew results.

It’s hard to imagine how eating an extra serving of produce daily could lower BMI values within six months. “However, there’s so much strong data that associates eating a healthy diet, particularly one that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, with a lower rate of almost every chronic disease, including heart disease, cancer, and dementia,