Dietary Guideline - Choose a Variety of Fruits and Vegetables Daily Fruits and vegetables provide many vitamins, minerals, carotenoids, flavonoids, and dietary fiber. High consumption of these foods is associated with reduced risk of most cancers and heart disease as well as with increased longevity.
Most studies suggest that vegetables have a greater health benefit than fruit.
Five servings is the minimum recommended with a goal of nine servings, depending on calorie needs. It is important to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, not one huge serving of one type. Frozen and canned varieties usually contain as much nutrients as the fresh forms. The produce industry lobbied hard to get this guideline to be the base of the pyramid. The committee disagreed with this, and it remains where it was in the previous guidelines.