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Lipids and cardiovascular/metabolic health

Fruit and vegetable consumption and hypertriglyceridemia: Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANES) 2007–2009

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 69, pages 1193–1199 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background:

Limited research has been conducted on the association between intake of fruits and vegetables and hypertriglyceridemia, especially in Asian populations. This study aimed to investigate the association between total fruit and vegetable intake, as well as subgroups of fruit and vegetable intake, with hypertriglyceridemia among Korean adults.

Methods:

We conducted a cross-sectional study of 7934 adults aged 19–64 years from the fourth Korean Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Fruit and vegetable intake was estimated from a food frequency questionnaire. Subgroups of fruits and vegetables included citrus, non-citrus and carotene-rich fruits and cruciferous, green leafy and carotene-rich vegetables. Hypertriglyceridemia (plasma triglyceride ⩾150 mg/dl) was diagnosed using a blood sample drawn after 12+ hours of fasting.

Results:

There were 2001 (25.2%) cases of hypertriglyceridemia among the participants. Total fruit intake was significantly inversely associated with the prevalence of hypertriglyceridemia; the multivariate odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) of hypertriglyceridemia across increasing quintiles were 1.00 (ref), 0.76 (0.62, 0.92), 0.72 (0.58, 0.90), 0.68 (0.54, 0.85) and 0.64 (0.49, 0.82; Ptrend=0.001) after controlling for survey year, body mass index, waist circumference, smoking, alcohol drinking, physical activity, education and income. Similar inverse associations were found for all fruit subgroups. However, we found no significant association between intakes of total or subgroups of vegetable and hypertriglyceridemia; the odds ratio for top vs bottom quintile was 1.00 (0.81–1.24) for total vegetable intake.

Conclusions:

Our findings support a potential beneficial role of fruit consumption to reduce blood triglyceride levels in Asian populations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Frank Sacks for his advice on the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    C Yuan, H J Shin & M J Stampfer

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    C Yuan & M J Stampfer

  3. Department of Food and Nutrition, Eulji University, Daejeon, Korea

    H-J Lee

  4. Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    H J Shin

  5. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospitals, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    M J Stampfer & E Cho

  6. Department of Dermatology, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    E Cho

  7. Department of Epidemiology, Brown School of Public Health, Providence, RI, USA

    E Cho

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Correspondence to E Cho.

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Yuan, C., Lee, HJ., Shin, H. et al. Fruit and vegetable consumption and hypertriglyceridemia: Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANES) 2007–2009. Eur J Clin Nutr 69, 1193–1199 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2015.77

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