London: A recent medical study finds that eating vegetables does not protect against cardiovascular disease, unlike previous studies.
Researchers at Oxford University analyzed the diets of nearly 400,000 UK adults in the UK and found that eating vegetables did not reduce the risk of heart disease over time.
The analysis found that raw vegetables could benefit the heart, but not cooked vegetables. However, the researchers said any heart-related benefit from vegetables vanished altogether when they accounted for lifestyle factors such as physical activity, smoking, drinking, fruit consumption, red and processed meat consumption, and use of vitamin and mineral supplements.
The findings challenge a host of previous research showing that eating more vegetables is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease that can lead to stroke, heart attack, and death.
"Our large study did not find evidence for a protective effect of vegetable intake on the occurrence of CVD cardiovascular disease," researcher Qi Feng, an epidemiologist in the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Population Health.
"Instead, our analyses show that the seemingly protective effect of vegetable intake against CVD risk is very likely to be accounted for by bias ... related to differences in socioeconomic situation and lifestyle," Feng added.
