ABSTRACT
Only about 50 years ago, fruit and vegetables (F&Vs) have been thought of as relatively low in most nutrients and therefore of limited value in nutrition. Most focus on vegetables in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) was related to the preventive actions of certain vegetable oils on thrombosis (Malmros 1969; Owren 1965). Several observational studies with ecological, case-control, or cohort design started soon after to change this picture, and the notion that F&Vs had a general protective effect against chronic diseases spurred the antioxidant hypothesis of prevention that dominated the thinking in the following 30-40 years. Today, this specic mechanistic hypothesis has been severely weakened, while larger prospective studies have provided additional observational evidence for an inverse association between F&V intakes and diseases of the cardiovascular system. Long-term intervention studies would be needed in order to supply rm evidence for a cause-andeffect relationship between F&V intake and CVD. Such studies are impractical because of their long-term perspective and the impossibility of blinding. The few existing studies with harder endpoints related to CVD are on secondary prevention. Since several risk markers of CVD are known, it is more feasible to conduct shorter-term dietary intervention studies to address the question of
27.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 501 27.2 Observational Evidence for Prevention of CVD by Fruit and Vegetables............................502
