New study on good & bad foods for your heart....

Today's post: Tuesday, 4-14-2009

If you have read this blog at all often already, you’ll have seen that we recommend a number of foods as being the core of eating right and another set of foods as the core of foods to never be eaten or eaten very, very rarely due to the horrible health effects of eating very much of them often.

So, it was fun to see the health news reporting today on a new study that was published yesterday that used careful analysis of a large number of studies to see which foods tended to help people have good heart health and which ones tended to be most harmful your heart.

It strongly supported the recommendations we have been posting here.

The study found that the Mediterranean dietary pattern was strongly confirmed to be good for your heart with vegetables and nuts being most important. The Mediterranean dietary pattern also contains extra virgin olive oil, some whole fruit, wild caught fish & other wild caught seafood, garlic, and red wine -- & even some whole grains.

(Important points to keep in mind if you want to eat that way are:

Organic vegetables have a much higher level of the micronutrients that separate research has found to be most health promoting than vegetables grown with pesticides and herbicides & so much so that may be almost more important than avoiding pesticides & herbicides as a reason to eat and if necessary pay extra for organic vegetables.

People who eat nuts regularly have even been found to live longer than people who don’t. So eating them may promote good health in other ways besides protecting your heart. But, some people are violently allergic and must avoid them. Also, raw and dry roasted nuts are good for you; but it’s important to know that nuts that have been roasted in cottonseed, vegetable, soy or corn oil &/or salted are NOT. The salt and high level of omega 6 oils from this kind of preparation are really bad for you, particularly if you eat them at all often.

Wild caught fish with low amounts of mercury in them are good for you; but farmed fish at this time have so many harmful contaminants and so much less omega 3 oils and more omega 6 oils that they are almost bad enough for you that they should be outlawed.)

There is already enough separate research to support eating a lot of vegetables, eating nuts, and for otherwise following the Mediterranean dietary pattern for most of your food that having these foods confirmed as being good for your heart is no surprise.

However, the other two conclusions were a bit more surprising.

They found less support for NOT eating dairy products and meat than their high saturated fat reputations would have predicted. There IS evidence that eating too much saturated fat from eating a lot of fatty meats and butterfat does harm your heart. (For example, in France, and I think in China, they found that people who eat more of these foods have more heart attacks than those who eat less. And, the DASH diet that stresses nonfat and very lowfat dairy and eating a lot less fatty meats does lower high blood pressure.)

But this new research suggests strongly that eating some meat and dairy in a diet that is mostly the Mediterranean dietary pattern is likely to be OK. (We already know that making your dairy products mostly nonfat and very lowfat and eating lean & eating fat-trimmed cuts of meat from animals fed only grass is dramatically better for you than eating only full fat dairy and fatty meat from animals that have been heavily grain fed.)

The really exciting thing this study found is that the two worst foods for you your heart are:

1. Transfats (aka trans fats and hydrogenated vegetable oil) AND

2. High glycemic foods such as refined grain foods, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and the foods that contain them.

Or in other words, if you eat a hamburger and fries and a soft drink and a dessert at a fast food place, they used to think this was bad for your heart from the saturated fat from the hamburger.

This is somewhat correct.

But what this new study demonstrates is that the lack of vegetables and the possible transfats from the fry oil and the massive dose of high glycemic carbs from the refined grain, potato with no skin, high fructose corn syrup in the soft drink, and sugar in the dessert are MUCH worse for you heart.

Of course we have been posting for quite a while that these same food ingredients make you fat and cause type 2 diabetes and the best solution is to eat or drink virtually none of those food components ever -- except very occasional use of sugar.

But now this new research suggests the same course of action as one of the best ways to avoid heart disease also.

It’s also worth noting that this study found some support for getting extra omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources, folate, and dietary vitamins E and C to protect your heart.

But while that effect was shown & likely is increased a lot if you do all these things, the effect apparently was not as large as eating the in the Mediterranean dietary pattern mostly and NOT eating foods with transfats, and foods & drinks made with refined grains, potatoes with no skin, high fructose corn syrup, and sugar.

(The actual study was published in the Monday, April 13, 2009 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.)