ISMNT News #44. Health conscious lifestyle is nearly synonymous with vegetable consumption. Vegetable consumption is indeed associated with a reduced risk for various diseases (see below) but not all chronic diseases are affected! Exceptions appear to be hypertension, diabetes mellitus and allergy. Clearly, further work is needed to identify any nutritional links.

The key reference is by:

La Vecchia C, Decarli A, Pagano R

Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Milan, Italy

Vegetable consumption and risk of chronic disease

Epidemiology 1998 Mar;9(2):208-210

We used data from the 1993 Italian Household Multipurpose Survey, based on a sample of 46,693 subjects ages 15 years or over, to analyze the relation between frequency of vegetable consumption and prevalence of 12 chronic diseases.

We observed little association with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and allergy.

There were inverse relations between vegetable consumption and myocardial infarction [odds ratio (OR) = 0.79 for the highest tertile], angina pectoris (OR = 0.89), chronic bronchitis (OR = 0.69), bronchial asthma (OR = 0.70), peptic ulcer (OR = 0.74), gallstones (OR = 0.92), liver cirrhosis (OR = 0.71), kidney stones (OR = 0.68), and arthritis (OR = 0.84). Adjustment for alcohol and tobacco use made little difference.