Study underlines diet link to heart attacks

Press, 6 June 1988, Page 16

Study underlines diet link to heart attacks

PA Wellington If New Zealanders ate slightly less saturated fat and cholesterol the high rate of deaths from heart attacks could drop significantly, the Health Department says. Its principal medical officer, Dr Murray Laugesen, said if smokers quit smoking it would further help to decrease heart attack deaths.

Dr Laugesen has just completed a study of New Zealanders’ consumption of saturated fats, cholesterol, cigarettes and alcohol, and death rates from heart attacks between 1968 and 1986. He said overseas studies had shown a highly suggestive link between increased consumption of those substances and more deaths from coronaries.

His study indicated that if New Zealanders ate 1 per cent less fat and cholesterol, it would lead to. a 4.2 per cent drp in deaths from coronaries

and a similar drop in deaths from strokes. If smokers left one cigarette in every pack of 20, their death rate from coronaries would fall 4 per cent.

He said New Zealand’s high coronary death rate had peaked in 1968 and had fallen 25 per cent since then to about 7000 in 1986. Alcohol and tobacco consumption had started to fall from 1975 and 1980 respectively. At the same time, people began to eat less fatty foods, particularly red meat and butter. Leaner meats were being produced, resulting in lower cholesterol production.

But the over-all reduction of cholesterol in the diet was partly offset by increased consumption of oils, cheese, ice-cream and chicken, Dr Laugesen said.

Although milk consumption continued to drop, the efffcjts of lower fat milk

could not yet be considered as it was not clear whether the fat taken from milk was fed back to consumers in other products.

Dr Laugesen warned that chicken could be very fatty if cooked in batter and if its skin and fat were not removed. Fish was low in cholesterol provided it was cooked without fat.

About 90 per cent of the variations in coronary death rates each year could be explained by variations in the amount of fat people ate, the cigarettes they smoked and alcohol they drank. He said consumption of fat was not falling as quickly as the annual 2 per cent drop in deaths. This might be because New Zealanders eating less visible fat, for example, by trimming meat, but offsetting the effect by eating more cakes and products in which the fat content was not as obvious. 4--1,V 1,