The first factor had the appearance of a global fruit and vegetable score. In that way, using it as an exposure may not have been too different from simply using fruits and vegetables as an exposure and then controlling for all other dietary variables. The advantage of factor scores in this situation may have been the ability of the factors to account adequately for variation in all other dietary components (since all foods made weighted contributions to the factor score), whereas in a traditional single food (or food group) analysis, controlling for potential confounding by other dietary constituents may have been incomplete. If this is true, it may help explain why we were able to observe a fruit and vegetable effect in men when many cohorts looking only at fruit or at vegetables observed null results (27–34). We still observed a null result for women on the fruit and vegetable factor, though, and this is consistent with most recent results from prospective studies of these food groups taken individually (27,28,30–37).