Fruit and vegetable diet may protect against falls

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables (FV) provides benefits for reducing the risk of falls, suggests a study. However, the associations between dietary patterns and bone mineral density (BMD) are modest and do not result in an improved fracture risk.

“Associations between diet and lumbar spine (LS) BMD may reflect osteoarthritis rather than osteoporosis,” the investigators said.

Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify dietary patterns in this study. The investigators measured femoral neck (FN), hip, and LS BMD using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, falls risk z-score using the Physiological Profile Assessment, and incident fractures by self-report. Associations between baseline dietary pattern z-scores and outcomes were estimated using linear mixed-effects models and log-binomial regression.

A total of 1,098 participants were included at baseline, of which 567 were retained over 10 years. The following dietary patterns were derived: FV, animal protein (AP), snack, and Western.

FV pattern reduced falls risk at baseline by β=0.05–0.08/SD. Lesser annual reductions in FN and hip BMD were noted for higher Western or AP pattern scores in all populations and women, while greater annual increase in LS of the entire population was observed with higher scores of FV, AP, and Western patterns (β=0.001 g/cm²/year/SD for all; p<0.05).

In addition, higher scores of FV and snack correlated with a greater risk of LS BMD increasing over 10 years (p<0.05 for all, except snack pattern in men), while incident fracture did not correlate with any dietary pattern in the overall cohort and both men and women separately.