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When Mom or Dad told you to eat up all your fruits and vegetables “because they're good for you,” they were right — although they may not have known all the reasons why. Now researchers conclude that a daily smorgasbord of fruits and vegetables can dramatically cut the risk of suffering a stroke.

An analysis of international studies involving 257,000 people found that those who ate more than five servings of fruit and vegetables a day had a 26 per cent reduced incidence of stroke, compared with those who ate fewer than three servings daily.

Individuals who consumed three to five servings cut their stroke risk by 11 per cent, said principal investigator Dr. Feng He, a cardiovascular research fellow at the St. George's University School of Medicine in London.

“This is a finding that clearly provides strong support for the current (U.K.) recommendations to increase fruit and vegetable intake to five or more servings per day,” she said Thursday from London, noting that the average Briton eats only 2.8 servings per day.

“Based on these results, I would encourage everybody to increase their fruit and vegetable intake,” said Dr. He.

Health Canada has been advising Canadians to eat five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables per day for more than a decade, but a national average of actual consumption hasn't been determined, said Danielle Brule of Health Canada's division of nutrition policy and promotion.

A typical serving of fruit would equal one medium apple or medium banana; a single vegetable serving would consist of 125 millilitres of raw or cooked carrots or beans, for instance, or 250 millilitres of salad.

The British researchers analyzed pooled data from eight major studies that looked at the association between fruit and vegetable consumption and stroke in men and women from Europe, Japan and the United States.

Previous studies had shown that increased fruit and vegetable consumption was related to a diminished risk of stroke — both ischemic (caused by a blood clot in the brain) and hemorrhagic (bleeding in the brain) — but the strength of the association had been uncertain.

Dr. David Spence, director of the Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Centre at the University of Western Ontario's Robarts Research Institute, agreed that the British analysis has better quantified the link between fruit and vegetable consumption and stroke reduction.

But the London, Ont., physician said Canadians shouldn't just load up on produce.

“You could do even better if in addition to increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables, you also increase your intake of whole grains and reduce your intake of cholesterol and animal fat,” said Dr. Spence, who advises his patients to follow the Mediterranean diet.

That's because research has shown that the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in whole grains, olive and canola oils as well as fruits and vegetables — but with reduced consumption of meat, chicken and fish — can diminish the risk of stroke and heart attack by about 60 per cent.

Dr. He, whose study is published in this week's edition of The Lancet, said fruits and vegetables are loaded with potassium, antioxidants like vitamin C, folate and fibre. And while researchers aren't sure which one element (or combination) is responsible for chopping the risk of stroke, she said potassium is known to lower elevated blood pressure — a major risk factor for stroke.

That doesn't mean that popping over-the-counter supplements will have the same stroke-preventing effects as eating produce, experts say.

“Disease prevention might not be attributable to single nutrients, but to the interaction of nutrient and non-nutritive components in whole foods,” Dr. Lyn Steffen, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, writes in a commentary accompanying the study. “It is likely that the combination of nutrients and compounds in foods has greater health benefits than the individual nutrient alone.”

So how many different fruits and vegetables should one eat each day?

Since vitamins, minerals and antioxidants differ from fruit to fruit and veg to veg, Dr. Spence advises his patients to put variety on their plates.

“It turns out that the antioxidants tend to be what gives each fruit or vegetable its flavour and its colour, and so eating fruits and vegetables of all different colours gives us combinations of antioxidants that are probably more effective than anything you can get in a pill.”