Medical Minutes: benefits of avocados

AN AVOCADO A DAY MAY KEEP HEART DISEASE AT BAY

MEDICAL MINUTES BY JOHN SCHIESZER

Replacing cheese or mayonnaise with an avocado may be a great new way to improve your overall diet. A new study has found that eating two or more servings of avocado weekly is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and substituting avocado for certain fat-containing foods like butter, cheese or processed meats is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease events. Avocados contain dietary fibre, unsaturated fats, especially monounsaturated fat (healthy fats), and other favourable components that have been associated with good cardiovascular health. Clinical trials have previously demonstrated that avocados have a positive impact on cardiovascular risk factors including high cholesterol. A medium avocado contains about 12 grams of fibre. The recommended amount is 28 to 34 grams of fibre per day. “Our study provides further evidence that the intake of plant-sourced unsaturated fats can improve diet quality and is an important component in cardiovascular disease prevention,” said lead study author Lorena S. Pacheco, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “These are particularly notable findings since the consumption of avocados has risen steeply in the US in the last 20 years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” For 30 years, researchers followed more than 68,780 women (ages 30 to 55 years) from the Nurses’ Health Study and more than 41,700 men (ages 40 to 75 years) from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. All the participants were free of cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke at the start of the study. Researchers documented 9,185 coronary heart disease events and 5,290 strokes during more than 30 years of follow-up. They assessed participants’ diet using food frequency questionnaires given at the beginning of the study and then every four years. They calculated avocado intake from a questionnaire item that asked about the amount consumed and frequency. One serving equalled half an avocado or a half cup of avocado. After considering a wide range of cardiovascular risk factors and overall diet, study participants who ate at least two servings of avocado each week had a 16 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 21 per cent lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared to those who never or rarely ate avocados. Based on statistical modelling, replacing half a serving daily of margarine, butter, egg, yoghurt, cheese or processed meats such as bacon with the same amount of avocado was associated with a 16 per cent to 22 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease events. The study aligns with American Heart Association guidance to follow the Mediterranean diet, which focuses on fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, fish and other healthy foods and plant-based fats such as olive, canola, sesame and non-tropical oils. “These findings are significant because a healthy dietary pattern is the cornerstone for cardiovascular health,” said Cheryl Anderson, chair of the American Heart Association’s Council on Epidemiology and Prevention. “However, it can be difficult for many Americans to achieve and adhere to healthy eating patterns.”. This research complements and expands current literature on plant-sourced unsaturated fats and heart disease. These findings further substantiate evidence on the replacement of certain spreads and saturated fat-containing foods such as cheese and processed meats, with a plant-sourced fat such as avocado, which, for the most part, is a well-accepted and popular food. Pacheco noted that avocados are readily available and can be included as part of a healthful diet as a spread or dressing, or even a dipping sauce. You can use the serving size of one-half cup of avocado (approximately 80 grams) and add it to salads, or as a spread on a sandwich in lieu of mayonnaise, or mix it with cilantro and lime juice as a dressing or dipping sauce with some raw veggies. Avocados can also be included in a smoothie instead of yoghurt.

Don’t Go Overboard with the Guacamole If you are following a medication regimen, Pacheco said you should first check-in with your physician and nutritionist before consuming large amounts of avocado. “In the case of avocados, these contain vitamin K, which is a blood clotting nutrient that may decrease the effect of blood-thinning medications like warfarin, so if you are on warfarin you need to consider this.” Avocados are also rich in potassium so someone on a low potassium diet needs to talk to their healthcare provider before including them in their diet. “Lastly, and slightly beyond the potential food-drug interaction, those individuals with a latex sensitivity or allergy should avoid avocados since some proteins in latex that cause latex allergy are also present in avocados, and in other fruits such as bananas, kiwis and strawberries to name a few,” said Pacheco. While avocados are a nutrient-rich food item with favourable food compounds including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, they also are a calorie-rich food item. Pairing avocados with chips may compromise the benefits. “In most cases, when you have guacamole or similar spreads, it is easy to over-consume them, increasing your overall calories. Besides this, most of us do not pay attention to the serving size on the bag of chips and keep ‘munching away’, making this a troublesome combination,” said Pacheco.

John Schieszer is an award-winning national journalist and radio and podcast broadcaster of The Medical Minute. He can be reached at medicalminutes@gmail.com.