Eating fruit every day can reduce the risk of heart and artery disease by up to 40 per cent, a study has found.

Compared with avoiding fruit altogether, daily consumption also cut the overall risk of death by nearly a third in at-risk individuals, said researchers.

The study, led by scientists at Oxford University, involved almost half a million people from China taking part in a large health and lifestyle investigation.

Fruit consumption frequency was recorded at the start of the seven-year follow-up period. The number of occasions people ate fruit ranged between never, one to three days per week, four to six days per week, and daily.

Around 18 per cent of participants consumed fruit daily while 6.3 per cent avoided all fruit.

The findings showed that compared with consuming none, eating fruit every day cut the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by 25 to 40 per cent.

A dose response was also seen. The more fruit consumed, the more the risk of CVD fell.

Lead researcher Huaidong Du, from Oxford University, said: “Our data clearly shows that eating fresh fruit can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, including ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke...

Researchers looked at associations between fruit consumption and death rate

“And not only that, the more fruit you eat the more your CVD risk goes down. It does suggest that eating more fruit is beneficial compared to less or no fruit.”

Blood pressure readings were up to 4.1 millimetres of mercury lower for people who ate fruit every day than for those who never ate fruit.

In a separate analysis, the researchers looked at associations between fruit consumption and death rate in more than 61,000 patients with CVD or high blood pressure at the start of the study. Compared with eating no fruit, daily fruit consumption cut the overall risk of death for this group of at-risk patients by 32 per cent.

It also reduced the risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease by 27 per cent and from stroke by around 40 per cent.