Transform Your Plate to Revive Your Heart

Healthy eating habits can lower heart disease risk in Asia. A new study examines how high-quality dietary patterns impact heart health in Asian populations.

Instead of examining the relationship between individual foods or nutrients and their related health outcomes, researchers are increasingly examining the relationship between overall dietary patterns and health outcomes. This method, which looks at a person's entire diet, better examines how different foods, food groups, and nutrients interact and affect health.

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Heart Health Starts on Your Plate

Dietary patterns are usually categorized using predefined dietary quality indices that assess how well a person follows certain dietary guidelines. They can also be created using data-driven methods that analyze the eating habits of specific populations.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are among the major leading causes of mortality in the world, with a significant number of premature heart disease deaths occurring in Asia. Previous reviews and meta-analyses on dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease have mostly relied on dietary quality indices based on data from non-Asian populations.

In recent years, many Asian countries have created their own dietary quality indices, such as the Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top and the Chinese Food Pagoda, which include details about foods unique to their local populations.

A new study examined the results of 41 studies to gain a clearer insight into how Asian dietary patterns affect heart disease risk.

The authors highlighted that this is the first meta-analysis to thoroughly examine how both non-Asian and Asian diet quality indices, as well as data-driven dietary patterns, are linked to cardiovascular disease risk in South, Southeast, and East Asian populations.

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To Stay Heart-Healthy: Power Up with Quality Diets

Foods were classified as

High Quality Foods

Fruits and vegetables
Whole grains
Healthy protein sources (legumes, nuts, low-fat dairy, fish, seafood and lean meats)
Plant oils

Low Quality Foods

Ultra-processed foods
Beverages and foods with added sugar
Foods high in salt
Alcoholic beverages

The findings of the study were published in Advances in Nutrition: An International Review Journal, a publication of the American Society for Nutrition ().

The study findings suggest that following a high-quality diet, whether based on non-Asian indices, Asian indices, or data-driven patterns, is consistently linked to lower cardiovascular disease risk in South, Southeast, and East Asian populations.

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Better Diets, Healthier Hearts

In general, these high-quality diets contain higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, low-fat dairy, fish, seafood, lean meats, and plant oils. Hence, eating high-quality diet keeps heart disease risk at bay.

However, the authors noted that the associations between current Asian diet quality indices and cardiovascular disease risk were weaker compared to established non-Asian indices like the Alternative Healthy Eating Index and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

As a result, the study authors suggest that Asian dietary guidelines and quality indices might need updating to better align with the latest recommendations for cardiovascular health.

Reference:

Dietary Patterns and Cardiovascular Diseases in Asia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis - (https://advances.nutrition.org/article/S2161-8313(24)00083-8/fulltext)

Source-Medindia

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