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 The findings don’t mean people should simply add avocados to their
daily diets. Instead, the study’s senior researcher said, the
results show that avocados incorporated into healthy diets reduced
low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
“They shouldn’t just add an avocado to their diet, but it would be
good if they incorporated an avocado into a healthy diet,” said
Penny Kris-Etherton, who chairs the American Heart Association’s
Nutrition Committee and is a nutrition expert at Pennsylvania State
University in University Park.
People should be eating a heart-healthy diet to lower the risk of
heart disease, write Kris-Etherton and her colleagues in the Journal
of the American Heart Association.
Only 5 to 6 percent of calories should come from saturated fatty
acids, which are found in foods like butter, fatty meat and cheese.
Instead of saturated fats, people should substitute polyunsaturated
and monounsaturated fatty acids.
One earlier trial found that a so-called Mediterranean diet, with
monounsaturated fatty acids from extra-virgin olive oil or mixed
nuts, cut the risk of major cardiovascular problems like strokes and
heart attacks by about 30 percent over five years among older people
at an increased risk for those problems, the researchers note.
Avocados are another source of monounsaturated fatty acids, but they
also have several other beneficial components, such as vitamins,
minerals and fiber, the researchers point out.
For the new study, they assigned 45 otherwise healthy overweight and
obese people between ages 21 and 70 to one of three diets aimed at
reducing cholesterol, which can collect in the arteries as plaque.
Participants ate a regular American diet for the two weeks before
starting the cholesterol-lowering diets. Then they followed either a
low-fat diet without avocado, a moderate-fat diet without avocado or
a moderate-fat diet with one avocado added every day.
After two weeks on an American diet, the average LDL cholesterol,
which is the type that collects in the arteries, was about 128
milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). An LDL level below 100 mg/dL is
considered ideal, according to the U.S. National Institutes of
Health.
Five weeks into the assigned diets, average LDL levels had fallen by
7.4 mg/dL in the low-fat without avocado group and 8.3 mg/dL in the
moderate-fat without avocado group.
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Those on the moderate-fat diet with avocado had the largest change
in bad cholesterol, however. Their LDL level fell by 13.5 mg/dL, the
researchers found.
A 13.5 mg/dL reduction in LDL cholesterol may be enough keep people
from going on cholesterol-lowering medications, Kris-Etherton said.
The reduction isn’t nearly as large as what people would see with
modern drugs for cholesterol, however.
Kris-Etherton said the study also shows that these heart-healthy
diets work at lowering LDL cholesterol with or without avocados.
“A healthy diet works, but there are some added benefits from
including the avocado,” she said.
Kate Patton, a preventive-cardiology dietitian at the Cleveland
Clinic in Ohio, said the added components of the avocado might have
given people in the avocado group an edge over the others, who were
also on healthy diets.
“Fiber basically helps you feel full longer and digest a lot
slower,” said Patton, who was not involved in the study, adding that
it may keep people from eating other things during the day.
Kris-Etherton said it’s also possible that people can benefit from
other fruits, vegetables or nuts with properties similar to
avocados.
As for people who want to make a change to their diet, she
recommends starting by taking a look at what they typically eat.
“Do a sort of self assessment of their diet and say ‘where else can
I make changes’ and go from there,” she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1tPmBlk Journal of the American Heart
Association, online January 7, 2015.
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