Heart: A "green" Mediterranean diet rich in high levels of plant ingredients and low levels of red meat or poultry may be beneficial to the body's cardiovascular and metabolic health

7, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Heart, scientists from Gurion University and others found that a green Mediterranean diet with more plant and less red meat or poultry may be better for cardiovascular and metabolic health in the population, at least in the male population, than traditional Mediterranean diet patterns.
Mediterranean diet, which is rich in plant-based organisms, is directly associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, and is now the main dietary guideline for the prevention of coronary heart disease.
Photo Source: CC0 Public Domain researchers say the beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet may be related to its high levels of polyphenols, healthy fat and fiber intake, and low levels of animal protein intake; researchers want to study whether the green version of the diet is more beneficial to the body's health, i.e. it contains more sources of green plant food and lower levels of red meat. In the
article, they randomly divided 294 sedentent and moderately obese people (BMI 31) with an average age of 51 into three eating groups, with the first group receiving guidance on enhancing physical activity and achieving a healthy diet, and the second group receiving the same physical activity guidance and being advised to follow calorie limits The traditional Mediterranean diet, which is 1,500-1800 kca per day for men and 1,200-1400 kca per day for women, contains simple carbohydrates, vegetables, poultry and fish instead of red meat, as well as 28g of walnuts per day.
A third group of participants were guided by physical activity and were also advised to follow a calorie-restricted green Mediterranean diet that also included 28g of walnuts a day, while participants avoided red or processed meat and consumed more plant-based substances In addition, it included 3-4 cups of green tea per day and 100 grams of frozen aquatic plant Wolffia globosa, rich in high protein, while the participants replaced some animal proteins with green plant protein shakes.
Six months later, the researchers assessed the effects of each diet pattern on weight loss and cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors, noting that participants who followed two Mediterranean diet patterns lost more weight, the green Mediterranean diet group lost 6.2 kg, the middle diet group lost 5.4 kg, and the healthy diet group lost 1.5 kg.
as an indicator of potentially harmful abdominal bulging, waist circumference was reduced by an average of 8.6cm among participants in the green Mediterranean diet group, 6.8cm in the Mediterranean diet group and 4.3 cm in the healthy eating group.
the green Mediterranean diet group had the largest drop in harmful LDL cholesterol levels, at 6.1 mg/dl, a decrease of nearly 4 per cent, compared with 2.3 mg/dl (nearly 1 per cent) in the Mediterranean diet group and 0.2 mg/dl in the healthy eating group.
Similarly, the researchers observed significant improvements in other cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors in participants in the Green Mediterranean Diet group, including decreased levels of espressopressin, insulin tolerance, and the important inflammatory marker, C-reactive protein, in addition to an increase in the ratio of good and bad cholesterol.
these changes may have led to a nearly twice as sharp drop in the 10-year Fleminham risk score of participants in the green Mediterranean diet group, which can help predict an individual's risk of developing severe heart disease over the next decade.
the researchers cautioned that there were only 35 women in their sample, which may not determine the specific factors that led to the observed effects of the green Mediterranean diet.
Researchers point out that education guides and encourages adherence to a green Zhanghai diet, combined with physical activity that may potentially improve public health, as it can help improve the balance of cardiovascular risk factors in the body and ultimately lead to the prevention of cardiovascular morbidity and population mortality.
In conclusion, the researchers concluded that the results of this study suggest that, in addition to the beneficial effects of the traditional Mediterranean diet, limiting meat intake while increasing the intake of plant-based and protein-rich foods may further promote heart metabolism and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in the body.
() Original source: Gal Tsaban, Anat Yaskolka Meir, Ehud Rinott, et al. The effect of green Mediterranean diet on cardiometabolic risk; a randomised controlled trial, Heart (2020). DOI: 10.1136/heartjnl-2020-317802。