Sleep Health: People who eat 5 cups of fruits, vegetables a day sleep 16% better than those who don’t, new study finds

A new study by researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine and Columbia University has found that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day is linked to better sleep that night. The findings of this are published in the medical journal Sleep Health.

Studies have shown that lack of sleep can lead people to consume unhealthy diets high in fat and sugar. But despite the far-reaching implications of sleep for public health and even economic efficiency, doctors and scientists know much less about how diet can affect sleep patterns.

The young, healthy adults who participated in the new aforesaid study reported their food intake daily using apps and wore wrist-worn monitors that enabled researchers to objectively assess their sleep patterns. The researchers specifically looked at “sleep fragmentation,” a measure of how often a person wakes up, or shifts from deep sleep to light sleep during the night.

The researchers found that the amount of food they ate during the day was associated with significant differences in sleep quality the following night. Participants who ate more fruits and vegetables during the day, as well as those who ate more healthy carbohydrates, particularly whole grains, tended to have deeper, more uninterrupted sleep that night.

Based on their results and statistical modeling, the researchers calculated that people who ate five cups of fruits and vegetables a day had 16 percent better sleep quality than those who didn’t eat fruits and vegetables.