Eat your heart out: The foods that can change your risk of cardiovascular disease

A poor diet is one of the main risk factors in cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in Australia and around the world.

But one limitation of research into the relationship between what we eat and cardiovascular disease is that links have usually been made based on what a person eats in one day.

When researchers typically collect the data, for instance, they ask participants: “What do you eat yesterday?” It’s not a great representation of our overall diet habits, says Dr Luna Xu, a researcher at the University of New South Wales.

So, for a new study, published in the journal Advances in Nutrition, Xu and her team wanted to explore people’s long-term eating habits (over a minimum of five years) and how those affected the risk of cardiovascular disease.

They looked at the diets of 70,273 people who had died from cardiovascular disease and compared them with a similar number of people who were healthy. Specifically, they analysed their consumption of 10 food groups: whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, eggs, poultry, dairy products, fish/seafood, red/processed meat.

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After adjusting for age, sex, current smoking status, BMI, alcohol intake and physical activity, the findings were both surprising and unsurprising. For instance, a high intake of red and processed meats over the long term increased the likelihood of cardiovascular death by 23 per cent. On the flip side, a high intake of high fruits and vegetables over many years reduced the likelihood of cardiovascular death by 28 per cent.

A high intake of nuts reduced cardiovascular death by 27 per cent, while eating lots of whole grains reduced cardiovascular death by 13 per cent.

As each of the 22 studies included in the systematic review had different ways of measuring food quantities consumed, Xu says she can’t provide specifics about what a “high” intake is exactly, only that the outcomes were based on a comparison between people who consumed the least of each food group and people who consumed the most.