Plant-Rich Diet Cited in Study

A low-fat diet rich in colorful vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans has twice the cholesterol-lowering power of a conventional low-fat diet -- even when the two diets have the same amount of calories and fat, researchers said Monday.

Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, they said the study suggested that low-fat diets might often fail to lower cholesterol because they contained the wrong nutrients.

“The effect of diet on lowering cholesterol has been really minimized and undermined by a lot of clinicians and researchers saying, ‘Yes, it has an effect but it’s really trivial: It would be better to put you on drugs to control your cholesterol,’ ” said Christopher Gardner of Stanford University, who led the study.

“But we think part of the reason was that we weren’t really giving diet a fair shake. We were so focused on the negative -- just what to avoid -- and not what to include.”

Gardner and colleagues tested 120 adults aged 30 to 65. All had moderately high low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad” cholesterol), with levels of 130 to 190. A desirable level is below 100.

Of the volunteers, 61 ate a conventional low-fat diet, which included frozen waffles, turkey bologna sandwiches, frozen pizza and similar foods. The other 59 ate a plant-based diet including whole-grain cereals, dark lettuces, bean burritos and vegetable soups.

Both diets contained identical amounts of total and saturated fat, protein, carbohydrates and cholesterol. Calories were carefully controlled to keep each volunteer’s weight constant.

After a month of eating in a special dining hall, both groups had lower cholesterol.

The conventional diet lowered LDL cholesterol by, on average, 4.6%. The plant-based diet lowered LDL by more than twice as much, by 9.4%, the researchers reported.