The Best Fruit For Healthy Bones

You probably already know that strength training and calcium can help to keep your bones healthy and strong as you age.

But some factors – like getting enough vitamin D, which helps to absorb calcium, and avoiding smoking, which raises your risk of osteoporosis and is linked to a 30-40% higher risk of broken hips – are less obvious.

And in one study, prunes, which are high in anti-inflammatory polyphenols and calcium-balancing vitamin K, appeared to preserve bone density and strength at weight-bearing parts of the hip for post-menopausal women.

The researchers followed a group of 235 postmenopausal women, who are at greater risk of bone loss, over a year.

They told one group to eat 50g (about five to six prunes) a day during the trial, and another group to eat 100g a day. A third group didn’t eat any prunes at all.

Though both prune levels were beneficial, the first group (50g) were more likely to stick to the habit, which meant they tended to get better results.

Professor Mary Jane De Souza, the study’s lead author, said: “Consuming five to six prunes a day for 12 months resulted in preservation of bone at the hip, a finding that was observable at six months and persisted through month 12.”

Postmenopausal women who didn’t consume any prunes saw a 1.1% bone loss in the same time period, while for those in the study, it stayed the same.

That benefit could lead to fewer bone breaks.

The same group of women were part of another study looking at how prunes seemed to affect the structure and estimated strength of their tibia.

“This is the first randomised controlled trial to look at three-dimensional bone outcomes with respect to bone structure, geometry and estimated strength,” Professor De Souza said.

“In our study, we saw that daily prune consumption impacted factors related to fracture risk. That’s clinically invaluable.”

She added that prunes may help to reduce the risk of osteoporosis, but more research is needed.