Rural Minnesotans eating fewer fruits and veggies
[MMA News Now, September 1, 2011] Rural residents may live closer to where fruits and vegetables are grown, but they aren’t eating as much produce as people who live in the city, according to recent research conducted by the Essentia Institute of Rural Health (EIRH) in Duluth.
In Minnesota, 19.5 percent of rural adults and 22.7 percent of non-rural adults reported meeting the daily fruit and vegetable requirement, according to results of the study, which EIRH included in a press release. Among the states growing the most fruits and vegetables, Hawaii is the only one where rural residents eat more produce than urban residents.
Using data from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from more than 400,000 U.S. households, the study’s authors found that only in 11 states did rural adults consume more fruits and vegetables than adults who lived in urban or suburban neighborhoods.
Researchers found that rural Americans who ate more fruits and vegetables were more likely to be women, more likely to be married or living with a partner, and more likely to be living in a household without children. They also had higher incomes, were more physically active, less likely to be obese and generally reported their health as being good or excellent.
“You could be a rural person living next to a huge farm that produces fruits and vegetables and not have the means to buy them, so people in the city, who are farther removed from the source, tend to be the more likely consumers,” Nawal Lutfiyya, Ph.D., a chronic disease epidemiologist at the EIRH and the study’s lead author. “That really brings up issues of access and cost.”
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