A new study compares vegetarian and Mediterranean diets in people at cardiovascular risk. Both are also beneficial for your health, with a few differences.
After the ketogenic diet and the DASH diet, let’s take a look at the Mediterranean and vegetarian diets. The Italian CARDIVEG (Cardiovascular Prevention With Vegetarian Diet) study compares the effects of Mediterranean and vegetarian diets over a period of three months, in overweight omnivorous people with a cardiovascular risk.
Good results with two different diets
The low calorie vegetarian diet is based on the exclusion of meats, poultry, fish, seafood or any other form of animal food. It does, however, include eggs and all other forms of food. As for the Mediterranean diet, it includes all food groups, including meats, poultry and fish.
118 people, 78% of whom were women, participated in this study. For three months, their weight and cardiovascular risk factors such as their lipid levels, markers of blood sugar, oxidative stress and inflammation were measured, among other things. At the end of the study, changes from the baseline were observed in all participants, including fewer calories, less total fat, less saturated fat and lower cholesterol levels.
Significant but different benefits
No difference was observed between the two diets in terms of body weight since significant decreases were observed in the two groups. Likewise, similar results are observed for BMI and body fat. In contrast, the differences are significant when looking at low density cholesterol, triglycerides and vitamin B12 levels. Furthermore, no significant difference was observed between the two regimens in terms of markers of oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines.
Specifically, both diets are therefore effective when it comes to reducing body weight, BMI and body fat, with no significant difference between them. However, the vegetarian diet is found to be more effective in terms of reducing low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels while the Mediterranean diet leads to a better reduction in triglyceride levels.
Due to the small number of participants in this study and their status in terms of cardiovascular disease risk (quite low), future studies should be conducted in other types of population, also including other criteria such as income. , geographic location, race and ethnicity.
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