Most people try to follow a nutritious diet so they feel alert and healthy during the day. But a new study shows that eating more fruits and vegetables can lead to benefits while you’re asleep, too.

The study, published in Sleep Health, found that participants saw a 16% improvement in sleep quality when they increased their fruit and vegetable intake from zero to five cups per day. In fact, the improvements were fairly immediate—greater fruit and vegetable consumption led to less fragmented sleep the subsequent night, the study found.

The results indicate that simple dietary changes could help you rest easy at night, and empower people to focus on the do’s of better sleep, rather than the don’ts, study author Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, professor of nutritional medicine and director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told Health.

“We often make recommendations for things to avoid for healthful sleep—don’t drink caffeine too late, don’t drink too much alcohol,” St-Onge told Health. “It’s good to know that there are foods that will lead to better sleep.” To investigate how daily eating patterns might affect sleep, St-Onge and the other researchers recruited 34 participants between the ages of 20 and 49, the majority of whom were men. To start, all of the participants were in good health and didn’t have any history of sleep problems.1

The study included two six-week phases, with a month between each. The research team asked participants to record all foods and beverages they consumed over multiple 24-hour periods, and also tracked their sleep with wrist actigraphy (a smartwatch-esque monitor). At the end of the study, the researchers looked for links between participants’ diets and their sleep quality. Specifically, they looked at fragmented sleep, or the amount of times participants woke up throughout the night, St-Onge explained.

The data showed that: Greater daytime intake of fruits and vegetables was associated with less disrupted sleep; greater carbohydrate and fiber intake was linked to better sleep quality; greater red and processed meat consumption was associated with worse sleep. In particular, increasing from zero to five daily cups of fruits and vegetables was linked to a 16% improved sleep quality.

Interestingly, added sugar was not linked to sleep quality, indicating that “carbohydrates and fiber from fruits and vegetables are most likely contributing to better sleep quality,” the study authors wrote. Essentially, this means that a person’s daily eating habits can directly influence how well they sleep at night, explained Brannon Blount, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian based in Virginia. “While we often think of sleep and diet as separate wellness goals, this research connects the two in a meaningful way,” she told Health.