NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters Health) -- Eating lots of fruits and vegetables appears to improve lung function, according to results of a study of European men published in the journal Thorax.
The investigators found that eating whole-grain bread was also linked to better lung function. They suggest that antioxidants found in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains may account for the findings.
A team of researchers led by Dr. Cora Tabak of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, studied data from over 3,000 men, collected during the 1960s in Finland, Italy, and the Netherlands. The men, aged 40 to 59 at the start of the study, completed interviews with trained dietitians and nutritionists about their health and usual eating and drinking habits, and their lung function was assessed through spirometry testing.
As expected, smoking had a negative effect on lung function in men from all three countries. Other study results, however, varied from one country to another, especially after the researchers accounted for age, smoking, body mass index, and alcohol consumption.
In Finnish men, better lung function was associated with higher intake of vitamins C and E. In Italy, it was related to fruit intake as well as to those vitamins. And in the Netherlands, lung function was associated with intake of beta-carotene.
Vitamins C and E and beta-carotene are all antioxidants that are found in produce and that are believed to fight damage in the airways as well as in other parts of the body. In all three countries, lung function was better in men whose fruit and vegetable intake was above average, and worse in those whose intake was below average.
Bread consumption was also positively related to lung function in Finland and the Netherlands, while fish intake was not a significant factor in any country. The researchers point out that whole-grain breads are high in antioxidants.
In their report, Tabak and colleagues note that relationships between individual foods or nutrients were not consistent across the three countries. They suggest that in addition to differences in national diet, it may be easier to evaluate consumption of general categories like "fruits and vegetables" than to asses intake of specific items such as vitamin C or beta-carotene.
