Eating Fruit Can Save Your Life

Do you like fruit? Turns out there's a lot riding on the answer to that question — in fact, eating fruit could impact your life span drastically. Who knew?

Though it's always been a key part of the food pyramid, new research now suggests that fruit may be even more important than we thought. Not only are people who eat fruit every day more likely to live at least as long as their country's average life expectancy, they are 40 percent less likely to suffer a fatal stroke and 27 percent less likely to die from heart disease. They are also up to 40 percent less likely to develop heart disease in general.

These findings are based on a study by Oxford researchers looking at the diets of nearly half a million people living in China. And the benefits the researchers saw for participants who ate fruit every day were incredible. Fruit lovers are, it turns out, just way less likely to develop deadly conditions like heart disease.

Of course, given that these results were observed in people in China, it's possible that they might not apply perfectly in an American context, given the wide variety of lifestyle differences that could cancel out the effects. Also, people who choose to eat more fruit are likely to be people who choose to make healthier lifestyle decisions in general. However, it's still something worth thinking about, especially since these effects were observed in all types of fruits. From blueberries to oranges to strawberries to apples, it turns out that any type of fruit is good when it comes to making you healthier.

So apparently it is true what they say about an apple a day keeping the doctor away.

But aside from the way in which it obviously lends itself to a very well known cliché, this news is great in that, unlike other food fads that seem to come and go and get contradicted then come back, this is something that you know you should really be doing anyway. Eating fruit every day is good for you. We already knew that. It just turns out it might be even better for you than we ever thought before. So pick up some apples (or oranges, or berries, or whatever), and make them a part of your daily routine if they aren't already.

Who knows? Maybe it'll save your life.