Could you be missing heart-healthy flavanols even if you eat vegetables?

Fact checked by Jennifer Klump

Key Takeaways

• Flavanols are plant compounds found in varying amounts in certain fruits, vegetables, legumes, and beverages that are associated with heart health benefits.
• Recent research shows that meeting general dietary guidelines about fruit and vegetable intake doesn’t guarantee you’re getting enough flavanols.
• Increase flavanol intake by eating more apples, berries, and beans, and drinking black or green tea.

If you generally eat your daily recommended two servings of fruits and three servings of vegetables, you probably assume you’re covering your bases for heart health. But a 2026 study suggests that eating the recommended amount doesn’t guarantee you’re getting enough heart-healthy flavonols.

Why Flavanols Matter for Heart Health

Flavanols are a group of antioxidant compounds found in fruits, vegetables, and certain drinks. They’ve drawn attention in cardiovascular research, particularly following results from the COSMOS (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study) trial, a major study that helped establish flavanols as an important plant-derived compound for heart health.

The COSMOS trial identified 500 milligrams (mg) per day as the intake level associated with measurable heart health benefits, which is now considered a benchmark for flavanol research.

The idea is that eating more flavanol-containing foods helps support your cardiovascular system. However, as the new study shows, it’s not that simple because the generic “eat your fruits and vegetables” advice doesn’t account for how unevenly flavanols are distributed across different foods.

What the Recent Study Says

Researchers set out to answer whether following existing dietary guidelines for fruit and vegetable intake (and eating a generally high-quality diet) actually gets most people to the 500 mg/day flavanol goal.

They measured flavanol intake objectively, using two validated biomarkers, rather than relying on participants’ food logs, which are prone to human reporting errors. They analyzed data from two large, geographically unique populations, including the COSMOS study in the United States (with over 6,500 participants) and the EPIC-Norfolk study in the United Kingdom (with more than 24,000 participants).

The results showed that people who ate more fruits and vegetables and scored higher on an overall diet-quality index usually had higher flavanol intakes. However, even among those who met dietary guidelines, fewer than one in four reached the 500 mg/day benchmark associated with heart health benefits. This was true among both the US and UK groups. The pattern held up in the UK cohort and in simulations modeling flavanol intake using fruits and vegetables commonly eaten by Americans.

The key finding was that simply adhering to current dietary guidelines on fruit and vegetable intake didn’t automatically translate into consuming the amount of flavanols shown to support heart health.

How to Actually Meet Your Flavanol Goals

All fruits and veggies are good for you, but a smaller group of certain fruits, legumes, and beverages is disproportionately rich in flavanols.

“If [people] want to improve their flavanol intake, they should include a range of fruits and vegetables in their diet that are rich in flavanols (e.g., apples, berries, or [fava] beans). For people who consume black or green tea, this becomes even easier.” Gunter Kuhnle, PhD, professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, and one of the study authors, told Verywell.

Here are some practical tips around this advice:

• Reach for flavanol-rich fruit: Apples, pears, and berries stand out as accessible, flavanol-dense options you can prioritize or swap in for lower-flavanol produce. The study also highlights stone fruits such as peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, mangoes, and dates as rich sources of flavanols.
• Don’t overlook legumes: Fava, pinto, and kidney beans are flavanol-rich options that rarely come up in typical “eat more vegetables” messaging.
• Drink choices count, too: If you already drink black or green tea, you may be closer to adequate flavanol intake than you think, as both contain plenty of these heart-healthy plant compounds.

Rather than eating more food overall or overhauling your whole diet, optimizing your flavanol intake can be as simple as making minor swaps.

Should the Dietary Guidelines Change?

Importantly, this study asks a broader question about how the current dietary guidelines are structured. Right now, most public health advice is framed in terms of total servings. However, this advice misses flavanol content.

“There are a number of bioactive compounds that are known to improve health—our study used flavanols as a model compound, but there are many others, for example, carotenoids. It would be a good outcome for those compounds to be considered in future dietary guidelines, which could then lead to refined and better advice to the public,” said Kuhnle, suggesting that emphasizing flavanols is a starting point for enhancing diet quality.

In other words, flavanols may be the first of several plant compounds that current guidelines are passing over. Future dietary recommendations may need to move beyond simple serving counts toward more nuanced advice that has been shown to support specific health goals.

Read the original article on Verywell Health