Publish date September 20, 2010

Eat Fruit for Healthier Eyes

At least three servings of fruit a day may protect people from the eye disease that affects the retina with age and can result in blindness. It is the result of eighteen years of testing and monitoring of eating habits, conducted by researchers from Boston…
Testing on the group of 118,000
people found that the probability of getting macular degeneration is 36% lower in subjects who consumed fruit at least three times a day, than in people who consume only half servings of fruit. Research was published in the scientific journal Archives of Ophtalmology.
Macular degeneration (also called senile macular degeneration), a disease in which sclerotic changes occur in the retina, is the leading cause of blindness in people older than 65 years. Drugs can slow the disease but not cure it. Already, previous studies have demonstrated that people are protected from this disease with vitamins C and E, beta carotene and zinc.

Scientists have begun looking at the dietary habits of men and women older than 50 years, who at the beginning of the research have not suffered from macular degeneration. Respondents filled in every few years detailed questionnaires, which discovered their eating habits. Over 700 patients in old age during the study were sick of macular degeneration. When comparing their diet with dietary habits of other subjects, it was clear that the consumption of fruits, especially bananas and oranges have a high protective effect. But they also found that the amount of vegetables on the development of the disease has no effect.

The study also showed that fruits with high carotene values don’t have greater protective effect than other fruits. Scientists led by Eunyoung Cho, from this concluded that flavonoids, fiber and potassium that are found in several fruits protect eyes from disease.

Celebrity nutritionist Catherine Collins believes that a clear outcome of the Boston research is in favor of fruits because perhaps subjects did not consume enough foods with protective effects such as those containing lutein. These are, for example, spinach and other vegetables. The vegetables have very useful substances that cannot be replaced by synthetic vitamins, she said.