Norman Swan

I think that the evidence is stronger for vegetables, different colored vegetables.

But there is evidence, for example, that the redness in watermelon...

That's true.

And a lot of it is soluble fiber.

And it's possible that some sweet fruits have more soluble fiber than others, like pears and so on.

But by and large, we can't find very much at all that you get in fruit that you don't get from a good variety of vegetables.

We know it from broad epidemiological data.

So we know from studying populations that populations with high vegetable intake, low red meat intake, that is associated with lower rates of coronary heart disease.

And there's also a relationship with cancer as well.

We know that the DASH diet that I talked about earlier has been studied in quite a lot of detail in the United States, and that also is associated with benefit.

And there's a study done in Australia, which actually made the comment that we don't know enough about cooking and the effects of cooking in that diet.

That's a 10-year-old study.

Again, shows...

Very strong correlation with fruit and vegetable consumption and your chances of dying of any cause.

And that's following a group of people through where they, several thousand people, where they knew quite a lot about their habits, their dietary habits and their exercise habits.

By the way, that study showed up to seven serves a day of fruit and vegetables gives you the highest risk reduction.

But it's a good question to ask because people who are eating fruit and vegetables are more likely to exercise, they're less likely to smoke, they're less likely to drink.

There's a lot of other things going on, but they did try to isolate that in this particular Australian study.

Well, another very large study, which is called the Global Burden of Disease Study.

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