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Eating 7+ portions of fruits and veggies a day reduces your risk of death by 42%
- mkhoury 13y agoI don't see the relation between this and hacking. Oh probably reduce risk of death -> live more -> code more -> hack more.
- ncavig 13y agoFair point, but I do appreciate stories that have to do with health of the human body as it lends to the idea of body hacking and performance tuning. If you peruse around, there's a lot of HN contributed stories and comments having to do with concepts of mixing in exercise and healthy eating habits to minimize lethargy and burnt out symptoms and maximize energy and life balance. (Hopefully no citations needed)
- Dirlewanger 13y agoRelax, I'd rather read this insightful piece than what some nobody's start-up's reason is for switching to Meteor and why everyone else should too.
- sp332 13y agoBefore you can be a healthy hacker, you must first be a healthy human being.
- jksmith 13y agoJust don't get shot with a banana cannon. That could cause trauma and death.
- pessimizer 13y agoVisit fruittrkr.com; FruitTrkr app available for iOS, Android, and Windows phone Q3 2014, VC valuation $1.3 billion.
- bdcravens 13y agoProbably more relevant than San Francisco real estate prices
- bdfh42 13y agoDon't you just love statements like "and canned and frozen fruit appeared to increase risk of death by 17% per portion" - I could be dead by nightfall. I do look forward to a proper statistical analysis of these results rather than this tabloid nonsense. It will be interesting to see if there is actually any measurable impact above (say) just some fruit or vegetable intake per day.
- NoPiece 13y agoThis seems pretty sloppy, "The survey did not distinguish between canned and frozen fruit..."
- will_work4tears 13y agoYeah, frozen fruit (and veggies) are often better quality than fresh.
- sitkack 13y agoYour risk of death is already, probably really really low, so increasing it by 17% isn't going to kill _you_. It will kill the other you out in statistics land, which could actually be me, so do a bro a favor and watch what you eat.
- saalweachter 13y agoTo clarify what I think you're saying: It's a percent of a percent. So if you have a 0.004% chance of dying on any given day, and you increase this by 100%, then you have a 0.008% chance of dying. Not a 100.004% chance.
- sitkack 13y ago100% !
- EliRivers 13y agoA LOT more than 17%. I have to hit someone really hard with a fresh banana to kill them, but a tin of peaches makes the job a dream :)
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- kzahel 13y agoI hate titles like this. Obviously nothing will decrease your risk of death because your death is 100% guaranteed.
- cheepin 13y agoIf I decrease my likelihood to die from cancer and heart-disease, which ones am I increasing?
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- sp332 13y agoKidney failure. Also various accidents and disasters.
- chc 13y agoNot at any point in time, you don't. You increase your risk of those things as t=∞ (because previously you might have died before they could happen), but your risk of those things does not increase at any point in time.
- sp332 13y agoOh, I see. Well if you start eating a lot of grapes, your chances of choking on a grape go up a lot :)
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe actual study, rather than the headline, is about all-cause chance of dying at any point in time. So you aren't increasing any. Your chance of dying eventually of some cause is unaffected, and remains at 1.00.
- chc 13y agoI have a much stronger dislike for comments like this. Obviously nothing will decrease your risk of death as time stretches toward infinity, so why bother pointing that out? "Hey guys, I chose to interpret this to mean something obviously wrong and it was wrong" isn't at all revelatory. The article even explicitly says "at any point in time" in the very first graf. The fact that the entire article isn't packed into the headline is also not all that revelatory.
- r4um 13y agoHow much is one portion actually ?
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- arjie 13y agoI searched on the Internet and couldn't find it either. I also don't have access to this paper so I can't check. Can anyone clarify why they don't use something standard like grams? Nobody else seems to have the question so I assume it's just something standard that we aren't understanding.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe study says they used UK Department of Health definitions of portion sizes, which are 80g / portion for fruits and vegetables. [1] [1] http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Portionsizes.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Portionsizes.aspx
- ajarmst 13y agoSigh. Correlation. Causation. No mechanism is offered, and all they studied was respondent's reported diet. Nothing to see here, other than the fact that there is evidence that eating lots of fresh produce correlates well with longevity. Really? Thanks, Mr. Scientist! Do both of those things also correlate well with upper middle class?
- pessimizer 13y agoThey do say that they controlled for class and physical activity: but the only thing open-access about the article is the abstract, so I can't tell how they controlled for those things.
- vdondeti 13y agoThe full article is available for free: http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-203500.full http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-20350... PDF: http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-203500.full.pdf+html http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-20350...
- pessimizer 13y agoI think I was thwarted by the UI. I see now that I tried to click on the Full Text link for the "Relevant Article." :)
- hyperbovine 13y agoThe controlled for them in the standard way, by adding them into the (Cox) regression. The full list of controls is: "Other variables included in the analysis were age (35–44 years, 45–54 years, 55–64 years, 65–74 years and 75+ years), sex, smoking status (current smoker, ex-regular smoker, never smoked regularly) and social class of the head of household (manual, non-manual, other). Education (degree or equivalent qualification, other, no qualification), measured body mass index (BMI) (<20 kg/m2, 20–24.9 kg/m2, 25–29.9 kg/m2, ≥30 kg/m2), physical activity (as maximum activity intensity level in the past 4 weeks: inactive, light activity, moderate activity, vigorous activity) and alcohol consumption on heaviest drinking day in the previous week (non-drinker, drank within limits, drank above limits, drank more than twice the recommended daily limit) were also added to the models as indicated." The most obvious thing missing from this list to me is all other dietary related variables. For example, people who like the taste of plants are probably far less likely to enjoy eating red meat, salty foods, and many other things that have been associated with increased mortality.
- zebulom 13y agoToday doctor says this, 10 years later doctor says exact opposite.
- wpietri 13y agoDoctors have been suggesting that people eat more fruits and vegetables for a lot more than 10 years.
- chrisBob 13y agoThis isn't very valuable with out the full questionnaire visible. Most of these kinds of "studies" come from huge questionnaires. If you ask enough questions then your statistics will show a strong link between something.
- bdcravens 13y ago"reduces your risk of death by 42%" Pretty sure I still have a 100% risk of dying no matter what.
- backprojection 13y agoRisk of dying as a function of age, obviously.
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- niuzeta 13y agolink to actual paper: http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-203500.full.pdf+html?sid=5fecc845-0e21-4e37-9b20-e15d266d525b http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/03/03/jech-2013-20350...
- fyresite 13y agoSteve Jobs was a fruitarian and he died at the young age of 56.
- misnome 13y agoWhat's your point? That anecdotal evidence can contradict statistics?
- drcube 13y agoAnd what are these "statistics" based on? Self reported survey data, aka "anecdotes".
- mhurron 13y agoYa, you're trolling but the conclusion here is going to help you - Steve Jobs was also scared of surgery which caused him to die of a curable affliction. Stupidity kills, you might need to be careful.
- grishas 13y agoAh, food studies. The breeding ground of bad science. I am not saying this is bad science, but a quick glance shows this to be survey data. The problem with the data is that people who eat "healthy" probably care more about their health. Even if the food has a negative effect, they could have other tendencies (exercise) that outweigh any negatives. Plus they probably eat more carefully, in general, drink less, etc. So... correlation != causation yada yada A better study would be to take unhealthy people and now introduce the fruits and veg and see what happens.
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- johnrob 13y agoYou might be correct, but I've seen a lot of smart people fall into this trap: "X is not proven to be true, there for X is false". The study might not prove any hard facts, but it doesn't mean the point of the study isn't spot on.
- izzydata 13y agoEating 500+ portions of fruits and veggies a day reduces your risk of death by 99.99%. Because you are far less likely to get into any accidents if you are so busy eating fruits.
- m_ram 13y agoYou'd need a spotter because your risk of choking would increase by a lot.
- j_r 13y agoblah, blah, blah...eat 7 portions of fruit and veggies, must not skip breakfast and at least have 5 meal servings a day(small portions), take some vitamins, low on carbs, eat some fish and healty white meat and drink a glass of wine per day..oh yeah and don't forget to excersise! Please tell me how many hours of day do we have left to live after all this?!? People have gone crazy with these researches!!!
- weavie 13y agoI doubt its quite so straightforward. If you eat less veggies and replace them with doughnuts amd beer then im sure you're probably more likely to die sooner. Replace them with organic pastured meats, particularly organ meats, then Im not so convinced. There is much more to health than the amount of vegetables you eat, including genetics, and it is imposssible to properly test them in isolation.
- weavie 13y agoI doubt its quite so straightforward. If you eat less veggies and replace them with doughnuts amd beer then im sure you're probably more likely to die sooner. Replace them with organic pastured meats, particularly organ meats, then Im not so convinced. There is much more to health than the amount of vegetables you eat, including genetics, and it is imposssible to properly test them in isolation.
- wehadfun 13y agoNo it doesn't Your risk of death is 100%
- adwf 13y agoOn a technical sidenote, 65226 people were in the study. Who wants to bet that the count was limited by the number of rows that fit in an old excel spreadsheet?