It’s time to make friends with the produce aisle: pumping your diet with fruits and vegetables isn’t just good for your waistline — it could save your life, according to new research from the University of Oxford.

While “5 a day” has traditionally been the mantra for fruit and veggie consumption, researchers found that those who consumed eight or more servings were 22 percent less likely to die from heart disease than those who consumed three or fewer servings a day.

Even among those who couldn’t manage the eight servings, more fruits and veggies consistently meant a lower risk; for every additional serving above two per day, researchers observed a four percent decrease in the rate of heart disease deaths.

Though past studies have linked the consumption of fruit and vegetables to heart health, many remain skeptical as to whether these foods have a direct protective effect on the heart. Given the size of Tuesday’s study (over 300,000 participants from eight different European countries) and the strength of its findings, some doctors feel that it may erase and remaining doubts concerning fruits and veggies, and cardiovascular health.

In the U.S., the recommended consumption of fruits and vegetables has often been promoted as “five a day”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved away from that recommendation in 2007, to a more flexible approach, dubbed Fruits & Veggies – More Matters.

Instead of a flat recommendation of five servings a day, the new program changes recommendations based on age, sex and activity level. For a 40-year-old sedentary man, recommendations are now two cups of fruits and three cups of vegetables a day; for a sedentary woman of that age, the recommendation is 1.5 cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of veggies.

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In order to cook with wine you need to know what wine is made of and what will be the effect on certain dishes when wine is used in the cooking process.

Wine is made up of water, grape acids, tannins and alcohol. All of these players, individually and together, affect the final result. Alcohol itself is tasteless, but it affects the release of flavour and fragrance molecules from the other components. It helps fats to dissolve and penetrate the food, bringing out hidden flavours. This is a chemical reaction that “ordinary” liquids, like water or stock, or even fats such as butter or oil cannot achieve. For this reason, when wine is added to the pot it should be allowed to simmer, uncovered, so that the alcohol and some of the volume evaporate. Never add wine at the end of cooking.

When red wine is made, the seeds and the skins are in prolonged contact with the grape juice, so red wine is rich in tannins. White wine is low in tannins because the juice does not come into contact with the skin and seeds during fermentation. Thick-skinned grapes (such as cabernet sauvignon) will result in tannin-rich wine, in contrast to thin-skinned varieties (like merlot).

White wine is low in tannins because the juice does not come into contact with the skin and seeds during fermentation. Thick-skinned grapes (such as cabernet sauvignon) will result in tannin-rich wine, in contrast to thin-skinned varieties (like merlot).

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