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Vegetables, fruit and muscles
Fruits and vegetables are healthy, and more fruits and vegetables is synonymous with better, this website has been calling for years. But a diet with lots of fruit and vegetables is not only interesting for people who just want to live longer and want to stay healthy for as long as possible. According to an animal study that pharmacologists from the University of South Florida published in Nutrients, such a diet also provides more and better functioning muscles.
Study
The researchers experimented with 3 groups of young male mice. For 20 weeks the test animals in the control group received standard feed, while the animals in the two experimental groups received feed to which the researchers had added fruit and vegetables in powder form.
The powders that the researchers used are commercially available and are produced by NutriFusion. [nutrifusion.com] The researchers used the extracts NF-216 [GF1] and NF-316 [GF2]. [grandfusion.co] You can see the composition of NF-216 and NF-316 here.
NutriFusion did not sponsor the study.
The feed of the mice in the experimental groups consisted for a few percent of fruit and vegetable powder. If the animals were adult humans, they would have received 20-30 grams of powder daily. That's about 2 tablespoons.
Results
The powders had no effect on the body weight of the mice. They also had no influence on the amount of feed that the animals ate.
The addition of vegetables and fruit improved the body composition. When the 20 weeks were over, the muscles of the mice in the GF1 and GF2 group were 1.4 and 1.45 times greater than in the control group, respectively. Not surprisingly, the mice in the experimental groups were also stronger.
When the 20 weeks were over, the researchers got the mice to run on a treadmill to failure. The mice in the experimental GF1 and GF2 groups were able to maintain 1.7 and 1.8 times longer than the control group, see below.
Click on the figure for a larger version.
The figure above also shows that the mice in the experimental groups were able to cover 50 percent more meters than the animals in the control group.
Mechanism
Below you can see how fruits and vegetables increased muscle mass and endurance. The extracts increased the amount of mitochondrial DNA [read: the number of mitochondria] in the muscle cells, and increased the activity of the mitochondrial enzymes that convert nutrients into cellular energy.
At the molecular level, fruit and vegetables activated signal molecules such as PPAR-delta, AMPK, PGC-1-alpha and SIRT1. Well known to the generally well-informed readers of this website.
Source:
Nutrients. 2018;10(8):1101.
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