Objective: To evaluate the association of vegetable and fruit intake with several demographic, anthropometric, lifestyle and dietary factors.
Design and setting: Cross-sectional analysis. Information on habitual diet was collected by means of the diet history method. Association of vegetable and fruit intakes with other factors was assessed separately by means of multiple lineal regression and the cumulative odds model.
Subjects: 39622 healthy subjects aged 29-69 years from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort in Spain.
Results: Fruit intake increased with age, education and physical activity and decreased with intake of saturated fatty acids and cholesterol; smoking and alcohol consumption were also negatively associated with fruit, with a very low consumption for current smokers and heavy drinkers. Vegetable intake increased with education and physical activity and with intake of unsaturated fatty acids, mainly monounsaturated. Former smokers consumed more vegetables than never or current smokers and non-consumers of alcohol ate less vegetables than consumers, among whom no differences were observed. All these estimates were adjusted by energy and body mass index (BMI).
Conclusions: When assessing the association of fruit and vegetables with chronic diseases it is important to take into account confounding factors. Furthermore, it would be useful to study dietary patterns including several interrelated factors.