Let’s Talk About Our Environment and Health
With more and more people worrying about the environment, plant-based diets are becoming quite popular.
A plant-based diet doesn’t include any meat and can be really good for our planet. But, how does it affect our health, especially our hearts? Heart diseases are the leading cause of death around the world, so it’s really important to know.
That’s why scientists decided to do a big review and analysis of different studies about plant-based diets.
How Did They Do the Review and Analysis?
The scientists looked at studies from 1980 to October 2022. They used online databases called PubMed and Embase to find these studies.
They also looked at previous reviews about the same topic. The studies they chose were ones that compared the effects of plant-based diets to meat-eating diets on the levels of certain types of fats in the blood in adults.
What Did They Find Out?
After looking at 30 trials, scientists found out that compared to meat-eating diets, plant-based diets lowered total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (often called “bad cholesterol”), and apolipoprotein B levels.
Cholesterol and apolipoprotein B are types of fats in the blood that can increase the risk of heart disease when their levels are high. But, they didn’t see any significant change in triglyceride levels, another type of fat in the blood.
So, What Does All of This Mean?
This review shows that vegetarian and vegan diets can lower the levels of certain types of fats in the blood that are often linked to heart diseases.
This was true no matter how old the people in the studies were, where they lived, how long the study was, whether they were healthy or not, what specific type of plant-based diet they followed, and the design of the study.
By lowering these fats, plant-based diets could possibly reduce the risk of heart diseases. This means eating more greens and less meat could help your heart stay strong and healthy.
The study was published in the European Heart Journal.
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