Heart healthy diets

Executive Summary

* In 2021, the American Heart Association (AHA) issued a scientific statement setting out 10 key principles of a heart healthy diet.

* A paper has been published which judged 10 diets for how well they meet the 10 AHA criteria.

* The 10 diets were: DASH; Mediterranean style; pescetarian; vegetarian; vegan; low fat; very low fat; low carbohydrate; paleo and very low carbohydrate. Some of these diets had objective definitions; other had subjective definitions.

* The AHA principles assumed that animal foods were bad and plant foods were good, fat was bad, and carbs were good etc. As a result, inevitably DASH, Mediterranean, pescetarian, vegetarian and vegan diets scored well. Very low carb and Paleo diets scored badly.

* Assumptions are everything when things are being judged. The assumptions were wrong and thus the study conclusions were wrong. I repeated the exercise assuming that we should eat essential nutrients and knowing in which foods these are found and the results were quite different.

 

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