A study showed that the Nordic diet, rich in game, berries and fish, lowered cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. The Mediterranean diet, however, remains more virtuous.
Would the Nordic diet have the same virtues for the heart as the famous Mediterranean diet? In any case, this is what seems to be shown by a study carried out by Finnish researchers and published in the Journal of internal medicine.
Research was in fact carried out by Nordic scientists on 166 obese patients from Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, who were following either their regular diet or the Nordic diet. While the two groups consumed the same number of calories, the group that adhered to the Nordic diet ate a lot of local products, such as berries, root vegetables, legumes and cabbage, as well as three meals of fish per week, nuts. , game, cereals and rapeseed oil. As for the group that followed the regular diet, they ate butter, but fewer berries and vegetables, and had no restrictions on the consumption of red meat and white bread. And the results reported by the research team are interesting.
After 24 weeks, participants on the Nordic diet showed on the one hand a drop in the level of chemicals responsible for inflammation of the blood vessels, linked to heart disease and type II diabetes. On the other hand, while the bad cholesterol level of members of this latter group was almost unchanged, that of the group following the Nordic diet showed a drop of 4%. An increase in good cholesterol has also been observed. In comparison, studies focusing on the Mediterranean diet have shown that it reduces cholesterol by 6 to 9%.
This is why, according to the nutritionist doctor Patrick Serog, the results of this publication should be tempered. “I think the drop in bad cholesterol seen with this Nordic diet is low. It is only 4% in the study, which is not much. If, for example, margarines rich in phytosterols are used, this results in a reduction of about 10%. On the other hand, when people have moderate hypercholesterolemia and they decrease their amount of fat consumed, they also get the same decrease. It is therefore the diet on cholesterol which has the least good index ”. So Mediterranean or Nordic diet, it’s up to you …
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