Study: Fiber-soy diet drops cholesterol
By Daniel Q. Haney
The Associated Press
MIAMI BEACH — People with high cholesterol may lower their levels by a surprising one-third with a vegetarian diet that combines trendy heart-healthy foods, including plenty of soy and soluble fiber, a study has found.
Although a healthy diet is a mainstay of cholesterol control, people typically reduce their cholesterol only about 10 percent by changing what they eat. Instead, doctors often prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.
However, studies suggest certain plant foods are especially good at lowering cholesterol. So a Canadian team put together a diet combining several of these to see what would happen.
"The reductions are surprising," said Cyril Kendall of the University of Toronto. "Most dietitians would not expect that sort of reduction through dietary means."
Whether most people would stick with such a diet is another matter, since it involves daily okra, eggplant and Metamucil, among other things.
Still, Kendall said, his preliminary results suggest the diet works about as well as the older statin drugs that still are first-line therapy for people with high cholesterol.
Kendall presented the results of his approach, called the Portfolio diet, at a meeting of the American Heart Association yesterday in Miami Beach. The research was sponsored by the Canadian government, the Almond Board of California and food companies Unilever Canada and Loblaw Brands.
"This was a pretty impressive result," said Dr. Stephen Daniels of Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. "However, the results need to be replicated. Can this be done in the real world or only in an experiment?"
The diet is based on a low-fat vegetarian regimen that emphasizes foods shown to be beneficial — soy, soluble fiber, plant sterols and almonds. Sources of soluble fiber include oats, barley, legumes, eggplant, okra and Metamucil. Some brands of margarine are high in plant sterols.
In the experiment, 25 volunteers ate either a standard low-fat diet or the Portfolio approach, while researchers watched the effects on their LDL cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease, and HDL, which lowers it. After one month, LDL levels fell 12 percent in those on the standard diet and 35 percent in those on the Portfolio diet. However, HDL levels were unchanged in people on the Portfolio diet.
Kendall said volunteers found the diet extremely filling, and several have stayed on it.
Whether it truly is as good as a statin, though, remains to be seen. Those drugs have been proven to reduce risk of heart attacks and death, while the diet has not been put to that test. Statins also may protect the heart in ways that go beyond their effect on cholesterol.
In the experiment, dieters received foods available from supermarkets or health-food stores. Every meal contained soy in some form, such as yogurt or milk.
A typical breakfast included oat bran, fruit and soy milk, lunch might involve vegetarian chili, oat-bran bread and tomato, and a typical dinner was vegetable curry, a soy burger, northern beans, barley, okra, eggplant, cauliflower, onions and red peppers. Volunteers also took Metamucil three times a day to provide soluble fiber from psyllium.
On a 2,000-calorie daily diet, volunteers had two grams of plant sterols from enriched margarine, 16 grams of soluble fiber from oats, barley and psyllium, and 45 grams of soy protein. They also ingested 200 grams of eggplant and 100 grams of okra daily and 30 grams of raw almonds. Additional vegetable protein was provided by beans, chick peas and lentils.