whether you want to believe it or not heart disease has a direct link with lifestyle and the most important thing is the food that you consume as per a latest study as link has been established between greater adherence to a variety of healthy eating patterns and lower risk of cardiovascular disease cvdas per the research that was published in the journal jama internal medicine the study focuses on healthy eating patterns rather than individual ingredients and nutrients to better account for diverse cultural and personal food traditions and preferencesour study indicates that greater adherence to any of the four healthy eating patterns we looked at is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and the health benefits persist across racial and ethnic groups said study first author zhilei shan from harvard th chan school of public health in the usthe research focused on dietary scores for four healthy eating patterns healthy eating index2015 hei2015 alternate mediterranean diet score amed healthful plantbased diet index hpdi and alternate healthy eating index aheinotwithstanding the divergent scoring methods each of these patterns emphasizes a higher intake of whole grains vegetables fruits legumes and nuts and lower intakes of red and processed meats and sugarsweetened beveragesto assess the associations of each pattern with cvd risk the researchers looked at data from 74930 women enrolled in the nurses health study 90864 women in the nurses health study ii and 43339 men in the health professionals followup studyparticipants in each study were asked every two to four years about their dietary habits including how often on average they consumed a standard portion size of various foodsusing the dietary data which was collected over several decades via validated dietary questionnaires the researchers created four dietary scores for each participant higher dietary scores represented greater adherence to healthy eating patterns after adjusting for numerous factors including age bmi and smoking status the analysis found that greater adherence to any of the healthy eating patterns was consistently associated with a lower risk of cvdthe research established that participants who adhered most to healthy eating patterns had a 14 per cent to 21 per cent lower risk of cvd when compared with those who adhered least the findings also showed that these different healthy eating patterns were similarly effective at lowering cvd risk across racial and ethnic groups and other subgroups studied and that they were statistically significantly associated with a lower risk of both coronary heart disease and strokethese data provide further evidence to support current dietary guidelines that following healthy eating patterns confer longterm health benefits on cardiovascular disease prevention the study authors wrote