CHD Risk Reduced By Some, But Not All, Plant-Based Diets

Consuming a healthy plant-based diet is associated with lessened risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), while a plant-based diet high in less-healthy plant foods is associated with higher CHD risk, according to a recent study.

For their study, researchers examined data from 73,710 women in the Nurses’ Health Study, 92,329 women in the Nurses’ Health Study 2, and 43,259 men from the Health Professional Follow-up Study, all free of chronic disease at baseline.
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They created a plant-based diet index using data from food-frequency questionnaires, assigning positive scores to plant foods and reverse scores to animal foods. A healthful plant-based diet index was also created, in which whole grains, fruits/vegetables, nuts/legumes, oils, tea, and coffee were given positive scores, and juices, sweetened beverages, refined grains, potatoes, and sweets were given reverse scores.

Overall, 8631 incident cases of CHD occurred in 4,833,042 person-years of follow-up. Higher adherence to a plant-based diet was independently inversely associated with CHD risk (hazard ratio [HR] 0.92), and the association was stronger for a healthy plant-based diet (HR 0.75). Conversely, unhealthy plant-based diets were associated with CHD risk (HR 1.32).

“Higher intake of a plant-based diet index rich in healthier plant foods is associated with substantially lower CHD risk, whereas a plant-based diet index that emphasizes less-healthy plant foods is associated with higher CHD risk.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Satija A, Bhupathiraju SN, Spiegelman D, et al. Healthful and unhealthful plant-based diets and the risk of coronary heart disease in U.S. adults. JACC. 2017;70(4):411-422.