Eating more plant foods may reduce heart disease risk in young adults, older women — ScienceDaily

In two separate studies analyzing different measures of healthy plant food intake, researchers found that both young adults and postmenopausal women had fewer heart attacks and were less likely to develop cardiovascular disease when they ate more healthy plant foods.

The American Heart Association Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations suggest an overall healthy dietary pattern that emphasizes a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, skinless poultry and fish, nuts and legumes, and non-tropical vegetable oils. It recommends limiting consumption of saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, red meat, sweets and sugary drinks.

A study titled “A plant-centered diet and the risk of incident cardiovascular disease during adolescence to middle adulthood” evaluated whether long-term consumption of a plant-centered diet and a change to a plant-centered diet beginning in youth are associated. Lower risk of cardiovascular disease in midlife.

“Previous studies have focused on single nutrients or single foods, yet little is known about plant-based diets and long-term risk of cardiovascular disease,” said Yuni Choi, PhD, lead author of the study in young adults. and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.

Choi and colleagues examined diet and heart disease events in 4,946 adults enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. Participants were 18- to 30-years-old at the time of enrollment in this study (1985–1986) and were free of cardiovascular disease at that time. Participants included 2,509 black adults and 2,437 white adults (overall 54.9% female) who were analyzed by education level (high school vs. more than or less than high school). Participants had eight follow-up examinations from 1987-88 to 2015-16 that included lab tests, physical measurements, medical history and assessment of lifestyle factors. Unlike randomized controlled trials, participants were not instructed to eat certain foods and were not told their scores on dietary measures, so researchers could collect unbiased, long-term habitual diet data.

After a detailed diet history interview, participants were scored based on diet quality the first The Diet Quality Score (APDQS) was composed of 46 food groups at years 0, 7 and 20 of the study. Food groups were categorized into beneficial foods (such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and whole grains); Unfavorable foods (such as fried potatoes, high-fat red meat, salty foods, pastries and soft drinks); and neutral foods (such as potatoes, refined grains, lean meats and shellfish) based on their known association with cardiovascular disease.

Participants who scored higher ate a variety of beneficial foods, while those with lower scores ate more unfavorable foods. Overall, higher values ​​correspond to a nutrient-rich, plant-centered diet.

“Unlike existing diet quality scores that are typically based on a small number of food groups, the APDQS clearly captures the overall quality of the diet using 46 individual food groups, describing the foods that the general population typically consumes. Our scoring is much more comprehensive, and it’s more comprehensive than Americans. The Dietary Guidelines for Healthy Eating (from the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service), the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, and the Mediterranean diet have many similarities,” said David E. Jacobs Jr., PhD, senior author of the study. and Mayo Professor of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.

The researchers found:

• During 32 years of follow-up, 289 of the participants developed cardiovascular disease (including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, heart-related chest pain or blocked arteries anywhere in the body).
• People scoring in the top 20% of the Long-Term Diet Quality Score (meaning they ate the most nutrient-dense plant foods and the least unfavorable rating of animal products) were 52% less likely to develop cardiovascular disease after controlling for various factors (including age, sex, race, average calorie consumption). , education, parental history of heart disease, smoking and average physical activity).
• Also, during the 7 to 20 years of the study when the participants were between the ages of 25 and 50, those who improved the quality of their diet the most (eating more beneficial plant foods and less unfavorable rates of animal products) were 61% less likely to develop subsequent cardiovascular events. disease, compared to participants whose diet quality declined the most during that period.
• Few of the participants were vegetarians, so the study was not able to assess the potential benefits of a strict vegetarian diet, which excludes all animal products, including meat, dairy and eggs.

“A nutrient-dense, plant-centered diet is beneficial for cardiovascular health. A plant-centered diet is not necessarily vegetarian,” Choi said. “People can choose between plant foods that are as close to natural as possible, not too processed. We think that people can include animal products in moderation from time to time, such as non-roasted poultry, non-roasted fish, eggs and low-fat dairy. .”

Because this study is observational, it cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship between diet and heart disease.

Other co-authors are Nicole Larson, PhD; Lynn M. Steffen, PhD; Pamela J. Schreiner, Ph.D.; Daniel D. Gallagher, PhD; Daniel A. Duprez, MD, PhD; James M. Shikani, Ph.D.; and Jamal S. Rana, MD, Ph.D.

The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health; Healthy Eating Healthy Living Institute at the University of Minnesota; and the MnDrive Global Food Ventures Professional Development Program at the University of Minnesota.

In another study, “Association between a Plant-Based Dietary Portfolio and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: Findings from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Prospective Cohort Study,” researchers in collaboration with WHI investigators led by Simin Liu, MD, Ph.D. ., at Brown University, evaluated whether including a dietary portfolio of plant-based foods with US Food and Drug Administration-approved health claims to lower “bad” cholesterol levels (known as the “portfolio diet”). Low cardiovascular disease incidence in a large cohort of postmenopausal women.

“Portfolio Diet” includes nuts; plant protein from soy, beans or tofu; Viscous soluble fiber from oats, barley, okra, eggplant, oranges, apples and berries; plant sterols from rich foods and monounsaturated fats found in olive and canola oil and avocado; including limited consumption of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. Previously, two randomized trials showed that reaching high targets for foods included in the portfolio diet significantly reduced “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), more than a traditional low-saturated-fat diet. One study compared diet and education programs to cholesterol-lowering statin drugs in another.

The study analyzed whether postmenopausal women who followed the Portfolio Diet experienced fewer heart disease events. The study included 123,330 women in the United States who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term national study that looked at the risk, prevention, and early detection of serious health conditions among postmenopausal women. When the women in this analysis were enrolled in the study between 1993 and 1998, they were 50-79 years old (average age 62) and did not have cardiovascular disease. The study group was followed until 2017 (mean follow-up time of 15.3 years). The researchers used self-reported food-frequency questionnaire data to score each woman for adherence to the portfolio diet.

The researchers found:

• Compared to women who followed the portfolio diet less frequently, those with the closest alignment were 11% less likely to develop any type of cardiovascular disease, 14% less likely to develop coronary heart disease, and 17% less likely to develop heart failure.
• There was no association between more closely following the Portfolio Diet and stroke or atrial fibrillation.

“These findings present an important opportunity, as there is still room for people to include more cholesterol-lowering plant foods in their diets. With greater adherence to the portfolio dietary pattern, one might even expect an association with fewer cardiovascular events, perhaps with cholesterol-lowering medications. Still, an 11% reduction is clinically meaningful and would meet the minimum threshold for benefit in any individual. The results suggest that the Portfolio Diet confers heart-health benefits,” said John Sevenpepper, MD, Ph.D., of Unity Health Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A site is the senior author of the study at St. Michael’s Hospital and an associate professor of nutritional science and medicine at the University of Toronto.

Researchers believe the findings highlight potential opportunities to reduce heart disease by encouraging people to eat more foods on the portfolio diet.

“We also found a dose response in our research, meaning you can start small, add one ingredient at a time to a portfolio diet, and get more heart-healthy benefits as you add more ingredients,” says Andrea J. Glenn, M.Sc., RD, is the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in nutritional sciences at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the University of Toronto.

Although the study was observational and cannot directly establish a cause-and-effect relationship between diet and cardiovascular events, the researchers believe it provides the most reliable estimate of the diet-heart relationship to date due to the study design (including well-validated foods). frequency questionnaires administered at baseline and year three to a large population of highly committed participants). However, the investigators report that these findings need to be further investigated in additional populations of men or younger women.

Co-authors are Kenneth Lowe, PhD; David JA Jenkins, MD, PhD; At Beatrice. Boucher, MHSc.; Anthony J. Hanley, PhD; Cyril WC Kendall, PhD; JoAnn E. Manson, MD, Dr.PH; Mara Z. Vitolins, Ph.D.; Linda G. Schnetseller, PhD; and Simin Liu, MD, Ph.D.

The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and Diabetes Canada.