Intended for healthcare professionals

  1. News & Views
  2. Vegetarian and...
  3. Vegetarian and pescatarian diets are linked to lower risk of ischaemic heart disease, study finds
Research News

Vegetarian and pescatarian diets are linked to lower risk of ischaemic heart disease, study finds

BMJ 2019; 366 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l5397 (Published 05 September 2019) Cite this as: BMJ 2019;366:l5397

Linked research

Risks of ischaemic heart disease and stroke in meat eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians over 18 years of follow-up

All rapid responses

Rapid responses are electronic comments to the editor. They enable our users to debate issues raised in articles published on bmj.com. A rapid response is first posted online. If you need the URL (web address) of an individual response, simply click on the response headline and copy the URL from the browser window. A proportion of responses will, after editing, be published online and in the print journal as letters, which are indexed in PubMed. Rapid responses are not indexed in PubMed and they are not journal articles. The BMJ reserves the right to remove responses which are being wilfully misrepresented as published articles.

Re: Vegetarian and pescatarian diets are linked to lower risk of ischaemic heart disease, study finds

This study tells us that avoiding meet reduces the risk of ischemic heart disease by 22%. On the other hand it does increase the risk of stroke by 20%. Both are serious diseases and so the net benefit of avoiding meat is almost zero.

I think the best is probably onsuming balanced food and in moderation particularly with meat like once a week meat instead of every day.

More research is needed to tell us what is the best diet.

Competing interests: No competing interests

06 September 2019
Ghassan S Musleh
Heart Surgeon
Non
Tabuk Heart Centre. KSA
Tabuk, KSA
Back to top