Vegetarian diet may help heart — study

Press, 2 April 1985, Page 20

Vegetarian diet may help heart — study

NZPA-AP Boston A vegetarian diet low in cholesterol but high in polyunsaturated fat may be able to stop the destructive advance of heart disease in some people, a new study suggests. Although many people believe that a low-cholesterol diet is good for the heart, doctors have had trouble proving that a change in diet alone can alter the course of heart disease. The new study, conducted in The Netherlands, was E’ ’ished in the “New EngJournal of Medicine,” along with research that compared the diets and health of brothers living in Ireland and Boston.. Together, the two reports add to the weight of evidence in favour of a

national diet change in the direction of greater consumption of vegetables, Dr David Blankenhorn, of the University of Southern California, wrote in an editorial. He said the Dutch study is the first to relate a specific diet to changes in heart disease. But because of limitations in the two projects, neither is likely to be the lats word in this long-running controversy. Dr Blankenhorn noted that there are grounds for rebuttal by dedicated meat eaters and opponents of a national diet change. The Dutch study, directed by Dr Alexander Arntzenius, of Leiden University, was conducted on 39 men and women who had angina chest pain caused by narrowing of their heart arteries.

For two years they ate a vegetarian diet. They cut their intake of saturated fat in half and doubled their consumption of polyunsaturated fat. They also ate less than 100 milligrams of cholesterol daily — only about one quarter of what Americans typically eat. When it was over, the level of heart disease had become worse in 21 of the patients but stayed the same in 18 others. The researchers suggested that the dietary change may have been responsible for at least some of the stabilisation of their disease. More definite conclusions were impossible, however, because there was no comparison group who ate normally during the twoyear experiment.