Eat Your Veggies, Help Your Arteries

Eat Your Veggies, Help Your Arteries

Vegetable-Rich Diet Tied to Less Artery-Clogging Plaque By Miranda
Hitti
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
on Monday, June 19, 2006

June 19, 2006 -- Scientists are serving up yet another reason to put
vegetables on your plate: It might discourage plaque from accumulating
in your arteries.

So says Michael Adams, DVM. He's a professor in Wake Forest
University's pathology/comparative medicine department in
Winston-Salem, N.C.

Adams and colleagues recently studied nearly 100 young male mice at
high genetic risk for artery-clogging plaque. For four months, the
researchers fed half of the mice a vegetable-free diet.

The other mice got the same number of calories, but 30% of those
calories came from equal parts of freeze-dried corn, carrots, green
beans, broccoli, and peas. Adams' team chose those vegetables because
they're five of the most common vegetables in the U.S. diet, not
counting potatoes.

Why not include potatoes? Because in the U.S., they're typically served
drenched in fat from frying, the scientists note in The Journal of
Nutrition's July issue.

Less Plaque

After four months, the scientists checked the mice's arteries. They
found 38% less plaque in the arteries of mice that had eaten the
vegetable-rich diet, compared with mice that had eaten no vegetables.

Mice fed the vegetable-rich diet also had modestly better cholesterol
levels -- including a slight drop in LDL ("bad") cholesterol -- and had
gained 7% less weight.

How do vegetables help tame plaque? That's still uncertain, write Adams
and colleagues.

Adams' team checked the data to look for clues. They concluded that the
differences in weight and cholesterol between the two groups of mice
didn't totally account for the plaque gap.

But the researchers found another clue related to inflammation, which
is associated with hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Adams
and colleagues found lower levels of an inflammatory marker in blood
from the mice on the vegetable-rich diet, compared with those lacking
vegetables.

The study was funded by the General Mills Company, which supplied the
vegetables.

SOURCES: Adams, M. The Journal of Nutrition, July 2006; vol 136: pp
1886-1889. News release, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

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