Apples and tomatoes are lifesavers

We all know that we need to get our daily dose of vegetables and fruit to keep the flu at bay. But not everyone is aware that these little vitamins do much more for our bodies. Have you resolved to live a bit healthier in the new year, do you want to quit smoking or could your fitness use a boost? Then fill your vegetable drawer tonight with a big bag of tomatoes and apples, because both little vitamin bombs help us live to a hundred. Research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that they restore your lung capacity. And yes, a good pair of lungs is quite handy for living healthily.

A team of scientists studied the lung function of over six hundred adults from Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2012. At the beginning of the study period, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their lifestyle, after which they were invited to have their lungs tested. Exactly ten years later, the scientists repeated the study. Various parameters were taken into account during the study, including gender, age, size, exercise, and social status.

The study found that adults who ate an average of two tomatoes or more than three servings of fresh fruit (especially apples) per day had a slower decline in lung function compared to those who consumed less than one tomato or less than one serving of fruit per day. And I'm not talking about a dollop of tomato ketchup or that splash of applesauce over your fried potatoes. Unfortunately. This protective effect was only observed in fresh vegetables and fruit, not in tomato sauce or applesauce.

But there's more: this effect is even greater among the participants who smoked or have smoked. Both tomatoes and apples contain certain substances that help repair the damage done to the lungs. “Lung function begins to decline at around age 30 at variable rates, depending on the general and specific health status of individuals,” says Professor Vanessa Garcia-Larsen, lead author of the study in a press release. “Our study suggests that regularly eating fruit can slow that decline and even repair damage caused by smoking.”

Snack So make sure to have a handful of tomatoes daily and take an apple break. That smoke break is so 2016.