Antioxidants in fruit have a ‘life-saving’ effect. It emerges from research conducted by Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and published in ‘Circulation,’ which showed a marked reduction in the risk of aneurysm and rupture of the abdominal aorta associated with daily consumption of two servings of fruit.
The study investigated the relationship between lifestyle and health conditions by following 80,000 volunteers, aged 46 to 84 years, for a 13-year period. It was found that in consumers of at least two servings of fruit a day, the probability of pathological dilatation of the most important arterial vessel in the human body was reduced by 25 percent and the probability that it would rupture by 43 percent. The benefit, measured against a daily intake of less than one serving, is even more pronounced when compared with no fruit from the daily diet (protection from the two monitored risks rises to 31 percent and 39 percent, respectively).
The protective effect has clearly been attributed to antioxidants in fresh fruit, whose healthful contributions are the subject of continuing scientific confirmation.
