London, April 1 (IANS): For a long and healthy life, eat at least seven portions of fresh fruits and vegetables, suggests a study that could lead to change in dietary recommendations in some countries.

Eating fruit and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of death, overall, and deaths from heart disease/stroke and cancer.

“The higher the intake of fruit and vegetables, the greater the protective effects seemed to be,” the study found.

And vegetables may pack more of a protective punch than fruit.

For the study, researchers analysed lifestyle data for more than 65,000 randomly selected adults aged at least 35, derived from annual national health surveys for England between 2001 and 2008.

They tracked recorded deaths from among the sample for an average of 7.5 years.

On average, the survey respondents said they had eaten just under four portions of fruit and vegetables the previous day.

During the monitoring period 4,399 people died (6.7 percent of the sample).

The same benefits were not found in a portion of frozen/tinned fruit.

The study appeared in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.