EAT your vegies every day to keep stress at bay.
That's the findings from new University of Sydney research.
The team looked at the links between diet and mental health in more than 60,000 Australians over 45 and found 12 per cent lower rates of stress reported by those who ate three to four serves of vegetables daily compared to those who ate one serve or none at all.
Women who ate three to four serves daily had a 18 per cent lower stress risk than women eating zero to one serves.
"This study shows that moderate daily fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with lower rates of psychological stress," said Dr Melody Ding of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health.
"It also reveals that moderate daily vegetable intake alone is linked to a lower incidence of psychological stress. Moderate fruit intake alone appears to confer no significant benefit on people's psychological stress."
The findings are consistent with previous studies.
The British Medical Journal Open published the findings.