One, the conventional diet, focused solely on avoiding harmful saturated fat and cholesterol. Participants ate foods such as frozen waffles and turkey bologna sandwiches. The second diet included the same proportions of fat and cholesterol, plus lots of plant-based foods in accordance with American Heart Association guidelines. Those diners ate foods such as hot grain cereals and vegetable soups.
Both diets lowered total and LDL (bad) cholesterol over the course of the four week study. The conventional diet produced, on average, a 4.6 per cent LDL decrease. But the plant-based diet beat that. It achieved, on average, a 9.4 per cent decrease in LDL. Researchers found no significant differences in changes in triglycerides or HDL (good) cholesterol.
"The effect of diet on lowering cholesterol has been really minimized and undermined by a lot of clinicians and researchers saying, 'Yes, it has an effect but it's really trivial: It would be better to put you on drugs to control your cholesterol,'" said Christopher Gardner, assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Centre and lead author on the National Institutes of Health-funded study. "But we think part of the reason was that we weren't really giving diet a fair shake. We were so focused on the negative - just what to avoid - and not what to include."
The bottom line? Do eat your veggies - and oilier nutrient-dense foods. It's not enough to simply steer clear of saturated fat and cholesterol.
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