Sept. 2, 2014 -- Eating fruit every day lowers the risk of getting heart and stroke problems by up to 40%, researchers say.

Their new study also found that the more fruit people ate, the more their risk of getting cardiovascular disease declined, and their blood pressure was lowered.

The findings are based on a study of 451,682 people enrolled in a health study in China and were presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The participants came from several different rural and urban areas, and none of them had a history of heart disease.

The amount of fruit they ate was logged at the start of the study according to five categories:

Never

Monthly

1-3 days per week

4-6 days per week

Daily

Some 18% of participants ate fruit daily and 6.3% never ate it. The average amount of fruit eaten by the people who said they had it daily was 1.5 servings.

Over the course of 7 years, there were 19,300 cases of heart disease and 19,689 strokes.