Cardiovascular Benefits of Controversial Foods

Dietary patterns and trending foods have some cardiovascular (CV) benefits. However, these benefits have not been understood clearly to date and scientific inquiries continue to come up in relation to these benefits. This article deals with controversial foods such as the added sugar, tea and dairy products etc. The said controversial foods have been mired by a ‘hype’ and received huge attention from the media.

A healthy diet has been one of the biggest solutions against diseases such as the atherosclerotic cardiovascular (ASCVD) as it is key in its prevention and the treatment. Despite the achievements that the healthy dietary patterns have made, patients continue to be fed with the new ‘miracle’ foods that are claimed to solve issues pertaining weight loss, curb disease risks and promote good health. One of the problems with these claimed ‘miracle’ food is that they had limited scientific evidence basis.

An example of a diet that has been controversial is the added sugar. Initially, in the 1950s, it was established that there was a correlation between intake of excess sugar and the cardiovascular disease (CVD) but later on 1960s it was found that the evidence to base the argument was not sufficient. Recently, the linkage between the dietary added sugar and the coronary heart diseases has been re-established. This has led to the conclusion that clinicians should ensure that they advise the patients to consume foods that have little or no sugar.

The health of the population will largely depend on attempts by each individual to partake a healthy diet. However, as persons look for the healthy diet they will be vulnerable to unsubstantiated health benefit claims. Therefore, the clinicians should ensure that they are updated on scientific evidence so that they can serve the patients with the correct and reliable prescriptions. (Date of the article 5, July 2018)

Work Cited

Freeman, Andrew M., et al. “A clinician’s guide for trending cardiovascular nutrition controversies: part II.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology 72.5 (2018): 553-568.