While already known to be good for your health, a new study shows that fresh fruit and vegetables may also help reduce the risk of diabetes and even reduce the mortality of those who already have it.

Huaidong Du, of the University of Oxford, and colleagues studied nearly 500,000 people participating in the China Kadoorie Biobank over about seven years of follow-ups, documenting new cases of diabetes and recording the occurrence of vascular disease and death in people with pre-existing diabetes.

The researchers found that people who reported an elevated consumption of fresh fruit had a lower associated risk of developing diabetes in comparison with other participants, which corresponds to an estimated 0.2 percent reduction in the absolute risk of diabetes over five years. In people with diabetes, higher consumption of fresh fruit was associated with a lower risk of mortality, corresponding to an absolute decrease in risk of 1.9 percent at five years, and with lower risks of microvascular and macrovascular complications.