HowToPreventHeartDisease.com

Can Lean Beef Be Part of Heart Healthy Diet?
 

Red meat is one that is red when raw and not white when cooked. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl such as ducks. It is a source of iron and it also contains protein, minerals like zinc and phosphorus and vitamins such as Vitamin B12 and niacin.

Based on the above information, it seems that red meat should be on our list of daily diet. Unfortunately, studies had shown that regular consumption of red meat could cause colorectal and other cancers, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, obesity and arthritis.

Despite commonly held beliefs, nutritional scientists from The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) argued that lean beef could contribute to a heart-healthy diet in the same way lean white meats could. They tested 4 kinds of diets that were equally low in saturated fat to see whether there were differences in cholesterol levels at the end of each testing period. Their findings were reported in the January 2012’s issue of the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’.

HAD (Healthy American Diet), DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), BOLD diet (Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet) and BOLD+ (Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet plus additional protein) were among the 4 types of diets tested.

DASH diet is recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA) to reduce cholesterol and cut risk of heart disease. People following the DASH diet are encouraged to eat fish and poultry but not much beef. The extra protein in the BOLD+ diet included more beef and other sources of protein like hummus, edamame beans and cottage cheese.

Researchers used HAD as the control diet, which consisted of 12 percent saturated fat per day (twice the saturated fat included in the other 3 tested diets) and 0.7 ounces of beef. The DASH diet included 1.0 ounce of beef, the BOLD diet had 4.0 ounces of beef and the BOLD+ diet had 5.4 ounces of beef, per day.

Using a rigorously designed Randomized Controlled Clinical Intervention Study, researchers investigated the effects of cholesterol-lowering diets with various amounts of lean beef. The study enrolled 36 adults aged between 30 and 65 with moderately elevated cholesterol. All the participants maintained their body weight within almost 5 pounds throughout the study periods.

All the participants were randomly assigned to a treatment order and consumed a total of 4 diets for 5 weeks each. In this way, researchers believed that errors associated with biological variation would be reduced. The participants were also given 1 or 2 weeks in between each diet to eat as they wished. Blood samples were taken at the beginning and at the end of each study period. Participants were randomly assigned the order in which they received each diet.

After 5 weeks, total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol in the participants were significantly reduced in the BOLD, BOLD+ and DASH diets, comparing to the HAD diet. On average, participants had a decline in both total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol on the 3 different diets. Total cholesterol lowered about 4 percent for participants on the BOLD and DASH diets and about 5 percent for those on the BOLD+ diet. LDL cholesterol lowered around 5 percent for participants on the BOLD diet, about 4.5 percent for people on the BOLD+ diet, and almost 6 percent for those on the DASH diet.

The improvements in heart health risk factors seen from the BOLD diets were as effective as those from the DASH and other heart-healthy diets, many of which emphasize plant proteins.

According to researchers, this was the first controlled-consumption study showing an increase in lean-beef consumption with controlled saturated fat in the context of a heart-healthy diet associated with significant decreases in LDL cholesterol. The study also provided evidence about lean beef in a heart-healthy diet, including a recent review of 20 epidemiological studies encompassing more than a million participants concluding that red meat intake did not raise heart disease risk.

Copyright 2007-2012 © HowToPreventHeartDisease.com . All Rights Reserved.d........
Created by EpublishingVault.com
Heart Disease Prevention - 8 Simple Ways You Can Do Immediately