Clinical research found that eating more fruits and veggies can lower blood pressure and improve heart health by reducing acid levels in the body. People who added two to four cups of fruits and vegetables to their daily diet wound up with lower blood pressure and reduced heart disease risk, as well as improved kidney health.

“This supports our recommendation that fruits and vegetables should be the ‘foundational’ treatment for patients with hypertension, because we accomplish all three goals [kidney health, lower blood pressure, and reduced cardiovascular disease risk] with fruits and vegetables, and we can do so with lower medication doses,” said researcher Maninder Kahlon, an associate professor of population health with the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.

For the trial, researchers divided a group of 153 patients with high blood pressure and very high levels of blood acid into three groups. One group ate more fruits and vegetables, another group took two sodium bicarbonate tablets daily, and the third kept following standard care.

The sodium bicarbonate group wound up with better kidney health than the control group, but didn’t gain the blood pressure and heart-health benefits of the fruits-and-veggies group.

In addition, the people eating more fruits and vegetables required lower doses of blood pressure medication.