Heart Association: Reduce Price for Fruits and Vegetables and Save 200,000 Lives

For years, the American Heart Association (AHA) was identified with a campaign to reduce consumption of red meat.  In lieu of eating so many ribeyes or sirloins or fast-food hamburger, the AHA recommended that people obtain their protein from chicken, fish or beans.

The heart association is also recommending greater consumption of fruits and vegetables, which  the group says should be more affordable. At the AHA's Epidemiology meeting meeting in Phoenix this week, experts said a 30-percent reduction in the price of fruits and vegetable could save nearly 200,000 lives over 15 years. That is roughly the population of Des Moines, Iowa.

Here's what a report in National Public Radio said this week:
"Computer models suggest that making that produce more affordable may actually translate into lower death rates from heart disease and stroke. And, the researchers add, lower prices are more effective at saving lives than traditional campaigns designed to encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables, like '5 A Day.' 

The conclusion is based in part on a tool developed by researchers at Tufts University and in Britain called the U.S. Impact Food Model that included projections of U.S. demographics and cardiovascular death rates to 2030. They then combined the data with current and projected fruit and vegetable intake figures. The model allowed the team to simulate the effects of different policies on eating habits.

"We were able to take a given change of price, and [determine] what that change in price does to consumption levels," lead researcher Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, an academic clinical fellow at Imperial College in London, told NPR.

Read the full NPR article.