Abstract

BackgroundSeveral studies observed associations of various aspects of diet with mental health, but little is known about the relationship between following the 5-a-day recommendation for fruit and vegetables consumption and mental health. Thus, we examined the associations of the Swiss daily recommended fruit and vegetable intake with psychological distress.MethodsData from 20,220 individuals aged 15+ years from the 2012 Swiss Health Survey were analyzed. The recommended portions of fruit and vegetables per day were defined as 5-a-day (at least 2 portions of fruit and 3 of vegetables). The outcome was perceived psychological distress over the previous 4 weeks (measured by the 5-item mental health index [MHI-5]). High distress (MHI-5 score ≤ 52), moderate distress (MHI-5 > 52 and ≤ 72) and low distress (MHI-5 > 72 and ≤ 100) were differentiated and multinomial logistic regression analyses adjusted for known confounding factors were performed.ResultsThe 5-a-day recommendation was met by 11.6 % of the participants with low distress, 9.3 % of those with moderate distress, and 6.2 % of those with high distress. Consumers fulfilling the 5-a-day recommendation had lower odds of being highly or moderately distressed than individuals consuming less fruit and vegetables (moderate vs. low distress: OR = 0.82, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.69-0.97; high vs. low distress: OR = 0.55, 95 % CI 0.41-0.75).ConclusionsDaily intake of 5 servings of fruit and vegetable was associated with lower psychological distress. Longitudinal studies are needed to further determine the causal nature of this relationship.

Highlights

  • Several studies observed associations of various aspects of diet with mental health, but little is known about the relationship between following the 5-a-day recommendation for fruit and vegetables consumption and mental health

  • A higher percentage of participants with high distress levels had a high level of education compared to individuals reporting low and moderate distress levels

  • A sensitivity analysis revealed similar distributions of sociodemographic characteristics stratified by psychological distress levels in individuals not included in this analysis

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Summary

Introduction

Several studies observed associations of various aspects of diet with mental health, but little is known about the relationship between following the 5-a-day recommendation for fruit and vegetables consumption and mental health. We examined the associations of the Swiss daily recommended fruit and vegetable intake with psychological distress. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), worldwide 25 % of individuals develop one or more mental or behavioral disorders during their lifetime [3]. There are a large number of bioactive compounds that could be responsible for an effect on mental health [14]. Only a few studies explicitly examined the association of fruit and vegetable intake with mental health, but these studies observed inverse associations [15, 16]

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