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Mediterranean diet lowers Brits’ CVD risk

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Mediterranean diet lowers Brits’ CVD risk

Sticking to a Mediterranean diet could lower an individual’s risk of heart disease by six to 16 per cent, suggests a new study published in the journal BMC Medicine.

The study, which is the first of its kind carried out on a UK population, assessed the association between new onset of cardiovascular disease (CVD) with a Mediterranean diet among 23,902 Britons over a 12-17 year period.

NICE recommends a Mediterranean diet – which is high in fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, nuts and olive oil, low in red meat and moderate in dairy, poultry, fish and wine – for secondary prevention of CVD, but the link between the diet and initial CVD events had not been examined in the UK until now.

Lead author Dr Nita Forouhi said: “We estimate that 3.9 per cent of all new cardiovascular disease cases or 12.5 per cent of cardiovascular deaths in our UK based study population could potentially be avoided if this population increased their adherence to the Mediterranean diet.”

 

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