Consuming avocados daily can help lower cholesterol levels: Study

The study, which was recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that eating the fruit can actually help boost overall diet quality

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Avocados are becoming popular by the day because of its many known health benefits. Now, a new health study has found that consuming one avocado every day for six months can actually help reduce harmful cholesterol levels.   

A team of researchers, which included Penn State researchers, also discovered that those who consumed avocados had higher-quality diets throughout the study.

This was the largest and most thorough study to date on the health effects of avocados, including a large number of participants and the length of the study period. While earlier, smaller studies have found a link between eating avocados and lower body weight, BMI, and waist circumferences, this one involved a much larger population.

The study, according to Penny Kris-Etherton, Evan Pugh University Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State, “provides evidence that avocados can be a healthy supplement to a well-balanced diet” even if it found that avocados had no impact on weight increase or belly fat. In this study, eating one avocado a day did not result in weight gain and also slightly decreased LDL cholesterol, which are all significant findings for better health.

According to Kristina Petersen, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, eating avocados regularly raised the participants’ diets’ overall quality by eight points on a scale of 100.

According to Petersen, “Our findings imply that eating an avocado per day can greatly boost overall diet quality. Adherence to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is often poor in the U.S. We are aware that a greater dietary quality is linked to a decreased risk of numerous diseases, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and several malignancies, therefore this is crucial information.

Together with UCLA, Tufts, and Loma Linda University, the study was recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Wake Forest University provided coordination support.

More than 1,000 people who were overweight or obese took part in the study’s six-month experiment, with half of them being told to eat one avocado every day while the other half maintained their regular diet.

According to Joan Sabate, a professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health, “eating one avocado a day did not result in body weight gain, but  it did not lead to clinically meaningful improvements in abdomen fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors.” This is good news because eating more calories from avocados has a minimally negative effect on total and LDL cholesterol while having no effect on body weight or abdominal fat.

Additionally, they discovered that eating avocados every day reduced LDL cholesterol by 2.5 mg/dL and total cholesterol by 2.9 mg/dL.

Future analysis of the study’s findings, according to the researchers, will continue. Future research might examine how participants incorporated the avocados into their diet and see if any changes in the outcomes were found based on how individuals ate the avocados since, for instance, participants were not given instructions on how to consume their avocados every day. 

Also Read: People suffering from diabetes, heart disease twice at risk of developing dementia: Study

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