We are all often recommended to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but only a minority of us actually take heed of the advice. And now new research may help motivate more people to do so in order to reduce their risk of heart disease.

The latest scientific study has found that eating lots of vegetables and fruits can weaken the effect of a gene variant called 9p21, which is reported to be one of the strongest predictors for heart disease.

The researchers from McMaster and McGill universities studied the diets of more than 27,000 people around the world, including Europe, China, and Latin America. They found that people with the high-risk gene appeared to have a similar risk of heart disease as people with a low-risk variant of that gene after consuming a diet with a healthy amount of vegetables and fruits.

How the diet has such an effect on the gene is still unknown. The study published in PLoS Medicine journal.