Pro-vegetarian food patterns are often thought of as having various health benefits. A study published recently in the European Journal of Nutrition set out to look at how these dietary patterns are associated with cardiometabolic risk.
Researchers in the study separated pro-vegetarian (PVG) food patterns into general (gPVG), healthful (hPVG), and unhealthful (uPVG), and then analyzed their relationship to cardiometabolic risk in adults with metabolic syndrome (MetS) from the PREDIMED-Plus randomized intervention trial. The gPVG food group was built by giving positive scores to plant-based foods, including nuts, and negatively scoring animal products. From there, hPVG and uPVG were constructed taking into account tea and coffee, fruit juices, sugary beverages, and sweets, while grains and potatoes were split and scored differently. Then using a cross-sectional analysis of 6,439 participants of PREDIMED-Plus, the relationship between pro-vegetarian patterns and MetS was examined. It was found that higher adherence to gPVG and hPVG was associated with lower cardiometabolic risk. On the other side, uPVG was associated with higher cardiometabolic risk.
In conclusion, those individuals who showed higher adherence to gPVG and hPVG food patterns, which include consumption of nuts, were generally associated with a lower cardiovascular risk.
Oncina-Cánovas, A., Vioque, J., González-Palacios, S., Martínez-González, M. Á., Salas-Salvadó, J., Corella, D., … & García-de-la-Hera, M. (2021). Pro-vegetarian food patterns and cardiometabolic risk in the PREDIMED-Plus study: a cross-sectional baseline analysis. European Journal of Nutrition, 1-16.