Key takeaways:
- A study following 200,000 people for decades revealed new data on the importance of food quality for heart health.
- PCPs should focus on their patients’ macronutrient quality, a researcher said.
ORLANDO — For heart health, food quality matters just as much as a dietary pattern, according to presenters at the annual NUTRITION meeting.
“Low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets have been widely promoted, yet their long-term effects on heart disease remain debated,” Zhiyuan Wu, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition, told Healio. “We aimed to evaluate how the quality and food sources within these diets affect heart disease risk and shape the metabolic profiles.”
Wu and colleagues conducted a study in which they followed nearly 200,000 participants — 64,164 women in the Nurse’s Health Study, conducted from 1986 to 2018; 92,189 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II, conducted from 1991 to 2019; and 43,430 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, conducted from 1986 to 2016.
The researchers analyzed detailed questionnaires from the participants, assigning scores according to how healthy their food choices were within low-fat and low-carbohydrate diets. They documented 19,407 cases of coronary heart disease and found that participants who followed an unhealthy version of their chosen diet saw a higher risk for developing coronary heart disease, but those who followed a healthy version saw a lower risk.
“Both healthy low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets were associated with a 15% lower risk for heart disease,” Wu said.
To improve patients’ diets, the researchers recommended reducing processed meat, sugary food and refined carb intake while adding more fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and whole grains. They also recommended paying attention to food labels, noting low-quality ingredients, like added sugars in processed snacks or juices.
Wu said the take-home message for PCPs is to “prioritize diet quality over simply reducing carbs or fats for heart disease prevention.”
“For clinical practice, the focus should be on the quality of macronutrients — encouraging whole grains, plant-based fats and minimizing refined carbs, sugary food and processed meats — regardless of whether a low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet is followed,” Wu said.
For more information:
Zhiyuan Wu, PhD, can be reached at zhiyuanwu@hsph.harvard.edu.
References:
- For heart health, food quality matters more than cutting carbs or fat. Available at: www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084802. Published June 1, 2025. Accessed June 2, 2025.
- Wu Z, et al. Abstract P17-077-25. Presented at: NUTRITION; May 31-June 3, 2025; Orlando.
