As long as you don’t count French fries and soda as healthy choices, it’s never too late to increase your longevity and cut your risk of heart disease death by adding fruits and vegetables to your diet, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention | Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2019, a premier global exchange of the latest advances in population based cardiovascular science for researchers and clinicians.
As long as you don’t count French fries and soda as healthy choices, it’s never too late to increase your longevity and cut your risk of heart disease death by adding fruits and vegetables to your diet, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention | Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2019, a premier global exchange of the latest advances in population based cardiovascular science for researchers and clinicians.
“Not all plant-based diets are equal, but boosting the intake of high-quality plant-based foods over time lowers the risk of death even among people who started off with poor-quality diets,” said Megu Y. Baden, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and postdoctoral research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
Previous studies have shown that eating a high-quality plant-based dietcan reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease, but this is the first to look at how positive or negative changes in diet may influence a person’s risk of dying – no matter where they started. In the current study, researchers developed three diet scales that took into account the overall consumption of plant-based foods, the consumption of healthful plant-based foods (such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts), and the consumption of lower-quality plant-based foods (such as fruit juices, refined grains, potatoes and sweets).
Read more at American Heart Association
