Vegan eating is good for your heart, right? Well, maybe not all that good, according to a recent study.
If you are eating the wrong plant based food, you may actually be damaging your heart.
Not All Vegan Eating is Good for Your Heart
It turns out that simply following a vegan lifestyle doesn’t give you a pass to eat unhealthy foods. We are talking about foods like French fires, highly refined grains and sugar.
In fact, according to the 2017 study published in the journal of the American College of Cardiology, an unhealthy plant based diet can actually lead to an increased risk of heart disease.
But don’t give up that vegan diet just yet. The study had some good news for vegans trying to cut down their risk of heart disease.
Healthy Vegan Eating Cuts Heart Disease Risk by 25%
Funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the study was done by researchers from Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Those researchers looked closely at data from 200,000 U.S. health workers reporting their diets over a 4 year period.
And the study actually did give a thumbs up to healthy vegan eating.
When they dived into the data, researchers found that a healthy vegan diet actually did reduce the risk of heart disease. But that result depended on a diet based on healthy whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, oils and tea.
In fact, healthy vegan eating reduced the risk of heart disease by a significant 25%.
Great Grains Support Good Health
Our take-away? To stay healthy we need to eat healthy. And meat eater, vegetarian or vegan, healthy eating means cutting down on those highly refined grains and sugars.
Vegans – just like everyone else – can benefit by avoiding processed foods and eating more whole grains and other fresh, whole foods. Heart healthy and they taste good!
Zinman’s Food Shop and Vegan Bistro in Tucson, Arizona specializes in healthy vegan cooking and fresh whole grains milled on site. See more about vegan eating and whole grain foods at Zinmans.com.