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 Even fewer adults eat enough vegetables to meet recommendations,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers found.
“Fruit and vegetable intake has been persistently low for years but
we just recently developed a way to look at how each state is doing"
in terms of meeting recommendations, said lead author Latetia V.
Moore of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion at the CDC.
“It is surprising how low intake is in some southern states but how
disappointingly low it is across the U.S.,” Moore told Reuters
Health by email.
Moore and her coauthors analyzed the most recent Behavioral Risk
Factor Surveillance System survey for all 50 states and the District
of Columbia, using a new scoring procedure to compare state-reported
numbers, which are usually expressed as “frequency of intake,” to
federal requirements, normally counted in “cups per day.”
Overall, in 2013, half of respondents consumed fruit less than once
per day and vegetables less than 1.7 times per day.
Researchers compared their responses to the Dietary Guidelines for
Americans, which recommend that adults who get less than 30 minutes
of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day should eat 1.5 to
2 cups of fruit and two to three cups of vegetables daily. More
active people may be able to consume more without adding too many
calories to their diet.
“All types of fruits and vegetables count, but the Dietary
Guidelines for Americans recommend that most of our fruit intake
come from whole fruit rather than fruit juice and that we eat fruits
and vegetables that have limited amounts of added sugars and solid
fat,” Moore said. “The guidelines also recommend that we increase
our intake of dark green and orange vegetables as well as beans.”
Overall, 13 percent of people in the U.S. reported eating enough
fruit and 8.9 percent reported eating enough vegetables to meet that
recommendation.
Fruit consumption was lowest in Tennessee, with about seven percent
of people meeting the recommendation, and highest in California,
with 17.7 percent meeting the recommendation, Moore’s team writes in
CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The proportion of Americans meeting vegetable recommendations ranged
from 5.5 percent in Mississippi to 13 percent in California.
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The results are limited in that they rely on self-reported food
consumption, which may not always be accurate, and because they did
not include those living in nursing homes, long-term care
facilities, military installations and correctional institutions,
the study team cautions.
It’s also not possible to know whether these numbers represent an
increase or decrease in fruit and vegetable consumption by state
from the period prior to 2010, since the surveys changed the way
they asked about produce consumption during that time, Moore said.
“We do know that how many times per day adults eat fruits and
vegetables did not change much from 2000 to 2009,” and that children
did start eating more fruits, but not vegetables, during that time,
she said.
Worksites, schools, childcare, and community settings should all
have access to fruits and vegetables that are competitively priced,
prominently displayed and promoted, she said.
“Fruits and vegetables are major contributors of important nutrients
that are typically lacking from Americans’ diets and they can
protect against many leading causes of illness and death like heart
disease, stroke and some cancers,” Moore said. “Eating fruits and
vegetables in place of foods that are high in calories, added
sugars, and solid fat can also help with weight management.”
SOURCE: http://1.usa.gov/1K4ibLk MMWR, online July 10, 2015.
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