A diet based around plants, nuts and high-fiber grains lowered "bad" cholesterol more than a low-saturated-fat diet that was also vegetarian, researchers reported on August 23. And the drop in low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, was big enough that dietary changes could be an alternative to statin medications for many people, they said.
"There's no question that statins have made a major difference in terms of cardiovascular disease control," said study author Dr David Jenkins, from the University of Toronto. But at least for now, he added, "we can only get so far with statins."
Jenkins and his colleagues wanted to see how big an effect a diet based on the pillars of lower cholesterol could have on LDL numbers without statins.
They randomly split 351 Canadians with high cholesterol into three groups. One group got nutrition counselling promoting a low-saturated-fat diet for six months.
In the other two groups, dietitians helped participants fit more cholesterol-lowering foods, including soy milk, tofu, nuts, oats, peas and beans, into a healthy diet - meeting with some of them twice during the study, and with others seven times. All the diets were vegetarian.
After six months, people on the low-saturated-fat diet saw a drop in LDL cholesterol of 8 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), on average, according to findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
That compared to 24 mg/dL and 26 mg/dL decreases in participants on the cholesterol-lowering diets. (The average starting LDL was about 170 mg/dL. A number 160 mg/dL and above is considered high.)
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