association between fruit/vegetable consumption and mental-health-related quality of life, major depression, and generalized anxiety disorder: a longitudinal study in thailand

Background: fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with improvements in mental health, but few studies examined this relationship longitudinally. objectives: the current study aimed at assessing the effect of fruit and vegetable consumption on mental-health-related quality of life, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorders. methods: the study analyzed fourwaves of longitudinal trial data collectedfrom442 templememberswith prehypertension and/or prediabetes, randomly selected from 12 buddhist temples in nakhon pathom province from 2016 to 2018. the longitudinal associations between fruit and vegetable consumption and three mental-health-measures were calculated using generalized estimating equations (gee). results: results of gee predicting mental-health-related quality of life indicated that more frequent fruit consumption (p = 0.485) was not, but more frequent vegetable consumption (p = 0.027) was in the fully adjusted model associated with greater mentalhealth- related quality of life. fruit and vegetable consumption (p = 0.033) was associatedwith greater mental-health-related quality of life only in the unadjusted model. more frequent fruit (p = 0.566 and p = 0.751, respectively), vegetable (p = 0.173 and p = 0.399), and fruit and vegetable consumption (p = 0.252 and p = 0.634, respectively) did not significantly reduce the risk of major depression and generalized anxiety disorder. conclusions: the current longitudinal study did not find evidence that more frequent fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with mental-health-related quality of life, depression, and anxiety. however, more frequent vegetable consumption was associated with greater mental-health-related quality of life.