Plant-Centered Diet in Young Adulthood Linked to 52% Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk

A diet built around nutritious plant foods in young adulthood is linked to a 52% lower risk of cardiovascular disease by middle age, a 32-year US study has found. Shifting toward that way of eating as an adult was linked to a 61% lower risk.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota followed 4,946 people from the CARDIA study, aged 18 to 30 when they joined in 1985-86, until 2018. Diet quality was scored on how much nutritionally rich plant food people ate, and how little high-fat meat and less healthy plant food. The results are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Those with the highest long-term scores had 52% lower risk than those with the lowest. Over 13 years in mid-adulthood, the biggest improvers had 61% lower subsequent risk than those whose diets slipped most. Few participants were vegetarian, so strict vegetarian diets could not be tested, and as an observational study it shows a link rather than proof.

A plant-centered diet is not necessarily vegetarian. People can choose among plant foods that are as close to natural as possible, not highly processed.

That is lead author Dr. Yuni Choi in the American Heart Association release.

The same CARDIA study found last year that young adults who ate more plants had 48% lower diabetes risk, and Oxford found vegetarians have 22% lower heart disease risk.

It is never too early, or too late, to put plants at the center.