Plant-Based Nutrition

Despite improvements in cardiovascular mortality rates over the past several decades, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains a leading cause of death in the USA. The rising prevalence of heart disease is strongly related to lifestyle factors. While a healthy diet is a well-established powerful tool for the prevention and treatment of CVD, nutrition counseling is insufficiently addressed by healthcare professionals, potentially from lack of education and awareness. Multiple studies have linked dietary patterns with incidence of CVD and found that consuming predominantly plant-based foods, versus animal-based, is associated with lower rates of heart disease. Plant-based dietary patterns are becoming increasingly popular because of a variety of reported health benefits to overall health and disease cardiovascular risk in particular.