If eating 5 fruits and veggies a day isnt enough to keep a healthy heart, whats the solution?

When it comes to eating fruits and vegetables for heart health, the choice of fruits and vegetables may be just as important as how many they eat, new research suggests.Health experts have long recommended the “five a day” guideline, meaning people should eat five servings total of fruits and vegetables.A group of scientists, however, contends in a new study that adhering to dietary guidelines may not provide enough flavanols — plant compounds linked to cardiovascular benefits.Flavanols are a type of antioxidant found in plants that have been shown to help improve blood flow and reduce inflammation and have been associated with a lower risk of death from heart disease.The researchers cited previous studies that associated a daily intake of 500 milligrams of flavanols with cardiovascular benefits.“Evidence from the COSMOS trial, the largest randomized controlled study on polyphenols to date, demonstrated that an intake of 500 milligrams [a] day of flavanols significantly reduced cardiovascular disease mortality by 27 percent,” they wrote.“Because fruits and vegetables, including legumes, are major sources of flavanols, and fruits and vegetables are emphasized in current dietary guidelines in the US, [the UK] and by the World Health Organization, it is plausible that adherence to these dietary guidelines could already deliver sufficient flavanol intake levels.”No data currently demonstrate whether the recommended fruit and vegetable intake levels and broader healthy dietary patterns provide flavanol levels associated with cardiovascular benefits, the researchers added.The scientists analyzed the diets and biomarker data of more than 30,000 adults in the US and UK. They found that even among people who met the dietary guidelines for fruits and vegetables, fewer than 25 percent achieved an estimated flavanol intake of 500 milligrams or more per day, the level associated with cardiovascular benefits in previous studies.The group of researchers — f...