Abstract
Objective: To describe the relationship between vegetable consumption and vegetable cultivation by prefecture in Japan.
Methods: In this ecological study, we collected the following official statistical data and used Spearman's correlation to assess the relationship between the following two parameters: 1) the mean vegetable consumption by gender and prefecture using data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey in Japan 2012; and 2) the amount of harvested and sold crops calculated from the data of the National Statistics of Crops in Japan 2012. Furthermore, scatter plots of the two parameters were created by each gender.
Results: The harvested amount of vegetables/population or the sold amount of vegetables/population showed no relationship with the mean vegetable consumption (men and women). A positive relationship was detected between (harvested amount of vegetables - sold amount of vegetables)/population and the mean vegetable consumption (men and women) (men: rs＝0.37, p＝0.011; women: rs＝0.45, p＝0.002). The mechanisms underlying the significant correlations were identified from scatter plots.
Conclusions: Harvesting a large amount of not-for-sale vegetables is associated with high vegetable consumption among residents in Japan. This relationship should be further assessed focusing on the not-for-sale vegetables.
