Remember when we were kids and we'd be picking at our steamed broccoli on our dinner plates and our moms would be like, "You'd better eat that if you don't want to get cardiomyopathy!"
Well, science has spoken, and sorry mom, but the game is up!
Packing your diet full of vegetables does not protect against heart disease, a new study suggests.
The findings challenge previous research that suggests eating more vegetables is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) – which can lead to stroke, heart attacks, and death.
Researchers say past studies may not have taken into account lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and meat intake – and socioeconomic factors such as a person's education, income and wealth.
Oh really, these "past studies" weren't fully comprehensive? You mean if you ate enough zucchini but also smoked like an industrial-era New York chimney... you might still get sick?
Or if you had a daily serving of collard greens but also ate like a Norse warrior on holiday, you might still catch a heart attack??
Well, shoot! Who would have thought it? Aside from every single one of us, anyway.
This study was at Oxford, by the way:
Dr Qi Feng, a researcher at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, and the study's lead author, said: "Our large study did not find evidence for a protective effect of vegetable intake on the occurrence of CVD.
