Toronto, January 09: Less than a quarter of Americans eats the five daily servings of fruits and vegetables that the National Cancer Institute recommends, but online programs may help boost those numbers, a new study hints.
As part of the Making Effective Nutrition Choices study, some 2500 people logged on to a website providing information on the benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables and ways to incorporate these healthy foods into their diets.
Three months into the study about 70 per cent of subjects were eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables on an average day, up from 20 per cent at the starting point. That increase held for the rest of the year-long study.
It was surprising to see such a large jump in the number of participants reaching the guidelines so early on, said study leader Dr. Christine Cole Johnson, and also to have those results hold for the next nine months. “In most nutritional studies, you’re happy if you get a half-serving increase,” Johnson said. But this study showed average increases of at least two servings daily.
Because the study included men and women aged 21 to 65 from around the country, the results indicate that a well-designed website could be used to educate more widely on the importance of fruit and vegetable consumption, Johnson said. “We think this could reach a large number of people and change habits on a national level,” she said.
The results of the study are published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
—-Agencies