The Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet on Heart Health
Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death worldwide, accounting for more than a third of deaths, per the World Health Organization (WHO), with a significant amount of deaths occurring before age 70. And, in the increasingly popular quest for longevity, many are looking to improve their cardiovascular health and live longer by committing to healthier eating and exercise habits and eating meat-free.
Vegetarian and plant-based diets have become more popular for a reason: a growing amount of evidence over the past several decades, including a pioneering study by Dr. Dean Ornish, indicates that a largely plant-based diet, combined with a lower-stress and physically active lifestyle, helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease related deaths. And a recent review published in the American Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that plant-based diets were associated with a 15% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and an 8% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Adding to the evidence, a late 2024 Harvard study also suggested that consuming more plant-based proteins like beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, is linked to significantly lower risks of heart and blood vessel problems. Researchers evaluated health and lifestyle information reported by more than 200,000 people and found that people who replaced red and processed meat with plant sources also had lower risks for stroke.
But it’s not just as simple as “eating plants sometimes” when it comes to reducing risk of disease or death.
In a recent article published by UCLA Health, Zhaoping Li, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Human Nutrition and a professor of medicine at UCLA, said that even a plant-based diet can be unbalanced if it includes too many refined carbohydrates or processed foods.
“It’s not just about avoiding animal products,” Dr. Li stated. “We should be focusing on whole, unprocessed plant foods like vegetables, fruits and legumes.”
A plant-based, or vegetarian, diet rich in potassium has also been shown to reduce blood pressure, reduce disease-causing inflammation, and, oftentimes, this leads to weight loss. Beef, veal, lamb, poultry, seafood, and animal fat have all been linked to a higher risk of high blood pressure. Many who eat plant-based replace animal meat sources with tofu and beans. And going meat-free doesn’t always mean quitting cheese or eggs or going vegan, it just means quitting meat, which has been linked to increased inflammation and numerous diseases, including cancer and heart disease.
The benefits of a mostly plant-based diet rich in fruits and vegetables are heavily due to an increase in fiber and a reduction in saturated fat, which causes LDL cholesterol to decrease. Research has shown that both red and white meat raise cholesterol levels equally. And the saturated fat in meat isn’t the only factor that increases heart disease risk. A study found that as meat is digested in the intestinal tract, gut microbes produce a compound called trimethylamine (TMA) that gets converted into trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) in the liver, which increases the risk for heart disease and heart atacks.
But there is hope. And that’s why developing heart-healthy diet habits at any age is so important.
Per Neal Barnard, MD, FACC, President, Physicians Committee, “if you change your diet, and do it very vigorously, you have enormous power. You can reverse heart disease. You can prevent it.”
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Additional References:
Miura K, Greenland P, Stamler J, et al. Relation of vegetable, fruit, and meat intake to 7-year blood pressure change in middle-aged men: the Chicago Western Electric Study. Am J Epidemiol. 2004;159(6):572-580. doi:10.1093/aje/kwh085
Borgi L, Curhan GC, Willett WC, Hu FB, Satija A, Forman JP. Long-term intake of animal flesh and risk of developing hypertension in three prospective cohort studies. J Hypertens. 2015;33(11):2231-2238. doi:10.1097/HJH.0000000000000722
Zong G, Li Y, Wanders AJ, et al. Intake of individual saturated fatty acids and risk of coronary heart disease in US men and women: two prospective longitudinal cohort studies. BMJ. 2016;355:i5796. doi:10.1136/bmj.i5796
Bergeron N, Chiu S, Williams PT, King SM, Krauss RM. Effects of red meat, white meat, and nonmeat protein sources on atherogenic lipoprotein measures in the context of low compared with high saturated fat intake: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2019;110(1):24-33. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqz035. Erratum in: Am J Clin Nutr. 2019;110(3):783. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqz143