Photo: Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Eating the most plant-based diets is linked to a 16% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 12% lower risk of coronary heart disease, a new analysis of nearly 700,000 people has found.
Researchers at National Taiwan University pooled ten prospective studies of nine cohorts, with 698,707 participants and more than 137,000 cardiovascular events. The systematic review and meta-analysis is published in the journal Nutrients.
Higher scores on both the overall plant-based diet index and the healthful version, which rewards whole grains, fruit, veg, nuts and legumes and marks down refined grains and sugary drinks, were linked to lower cardiovascular risk. The results for stroke pointed the same way but were not statistically clear.
These results support the claim that diets lower in animal foods and unhealthy plant foods, and higher in healthy plant foods are beneficial for CVD prevention.
That is how the authors conclude in their abstract.
It agrees with the 2019 analysis linking plant-based diets to 16% lower cardiovascular disease risk and with August's CARDIA study, where a plant-centered diet in young adulthood was linked to 52% lower risk.
The evidence for plants and a healthy heart keeps stacking up.