Preventing Coronary Heart Disease : The Role of Antioxidants, Vegetables and Fruit

This report highlights the role of antioxidant nutrients, found mainly in foods of plant origin, such as friut and vegetables, could play in not just maintaining health but lowering the risk of disease.

It reaches three main conclusions: a diet rich in a range of fruit and vegetables appears to be beneficial, lowering the risk of coronary heart disease with no evidence of harm; national and international recommemdations to increase fruit and vegetable intakes to at least five portions a day form a sound basis for policy; and the evidence from research studies on the protective effect of specific antioxidant nutrients is incomplete and further research is needed before quantitative recommendations for specific antioxidant nutrients can be made.