A team of UK and Japanese researchers confirm previous findings that fruit and vegetables can reduce the risk of cancer mortality.
The researchers studied the association between green-yellow vegetables and fruit consumption and risk of cancer death in atomic-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
More than 38,500 men and women completed a dietary questionnaire from 1980-1981. By March 1998, 3136 cancer deaths were identified among the group.
The researchers report in the British Journal of Cancer that daily or almost daily fruit consumption was associated with a significant 12 per cent reduction in total cancer mortality. Daily or almost daily intake of green-yellow vegetables also lowered risk of death from cancer, by a more marginal 8 per cent.
Recent studies have also found that children who eat fruit and vegetables regularly are less likely to develop cancer in later years.
Studying different types of fruit and vegetables, they report that those eating green-yellow vegetables regularly were significantly less likely to die from liver cancer mortality, while fruit consumption was associated with a significantly reduced risk of death from stomach cancer and lung cancer mortality.
Both green-yellow vegetables and fruit seemed to reduce oesophageal cancer, but results for these associations were not statistically significant, report the team.
They added that neither green-yellow vegetables nor fruit consumption was associated with colorectal cancer or breast cancer mortality.
"These results support the evidence that daily consumption of fruit and vegetables reduces the risk of total cancer, and specifically cancers of the stomach, liver, and lung," conclude the authors.