How The Portfolio Diet May Lower Heart Disease Risk

If you’re a living, breathing human on this planet, chances are that someone, at some point, has urged you to eat your fruits and vegetables. There are good reasons for that: Eating a diet low in fruit and veggies, and high in saturated fats, puts you at risk of developing heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It only makes sense, then, that produce-forward meal plans protect your cardiovascular health. These diets are known to help control risk factors for heart disease like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. (However, medication is necessary sometimes, too.)

The Mediterranean diet is a common heart-healthy approach, but there’s another option that may also be key to lowering your cholesterol and your risk of coronary artery disease: the portfolio diet.

Below, experts share the rundown on this plant-forward meal plan and why it’s worth trying.

“The portfolio diet was proposed about 20 years ago, and it has a lot in common with other heart-healthy diets that that you heard of, such as a Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet and a whole food, plant-based diet,” said Dr. Sarah Hull, an associate professor of medicine in cardiology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut.

“The name comes from the fact that this diet includes a portfolio of cholesterol-lowering foods, so foods that reduce mostly the bad cholesterol in the diet,” noted Kristina Petersen, an associate professor in the department of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University.

The portfolio diet is made up of four different food profiles, Melissa Prest, a clinical nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told HuffPost via email. It encourages the consumption of plant-based protein, plant sterols (a natural compound that helps lower cholesterol levels), soluble fiber and monounsaturated fat.

This means “eating a lot of foods like beans, lentils, soy, nuts and seeds, fruits, vegetables and whole grains as a way to obtain those foods, which basically, again, is very similar to whole food plant-based diet,” Hull said.

Some other heart-healthy diets, like the Mediterranean diet and the DASH eating plan, also include animal products like fish and poultry, and dairy products like yogurt and cheese. But the portfolio diet is vegan — which means if you intend to follow the diet exactly, you’ll need to remove any animal products from your rotation.

According to Petersen, the portfolio diet is not as well-studied as the Mediterranean diet, but the data that is available shows it can significantly benefit your cardiovascular health.

“There have been several studies done where they’ve shown pretty substantial lowering of LDL cholesterol ― so the bad cholesterol that increases risk of heart disease ― with this diet,” Petersen said. “In the original study, the lowering was about 29% in four weeks.”

“And then [researchers] did a subsequent study where they actually compared following this diet with lovastatin, which is a pharmaceutical agent to lower cholesterol, and they actually saw a pretty comparable lowering of LDL,” Petersen said. “So we have quite a bit of evidence that it lowers LDL cholesterol, and this is really what the diet is best known for.”

There are still health rewards even if you just add parts of the portfolio diet to your lifestyle. “Each of the four portfolios can reduce cholesterol levels by 5-10%,” Prest said.

Lowering bad cholesterol is “an important part of preventing and treating cardiovascular disease, such as heart attacks and stroke,” Hull said.

Research also shows that people who follow the portfolio diet are 14% less likely to develop coronary heart disease and have a stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

There are also other health benefits to the portfolio diet: It’s anti-inflammatory and can help people reach their daily fiber goal (most Americans are fiber deficient), Hull said. Women need between 21 and 25 grams of fiber each day, and men need between 30 and 38 grams daily.

“Thinking about making incremental changes rather than making huge, sweeping changes is one of the most important principles to keep in mind,” Hull said. “So, the first thing is to think about [is], ‘What’s my biggest barrier to incorporating healthy changes?’”

If money is an issue, consider buying frozen fruits and veggies instead of fresh — they’ll last longer and are usually cheaper than the fresh alternative, Hull suggested. Bulk dried legumes, such as beans and lentils, are also more economical, she noted.

If your issue is time, consider meal prepping on the weekends, and look up plant-based, make-ahead recipes. Or if you just don’t know how to prep plant-based meals, consider talking to your doctor or a dietitian.

You can start small by focusing on one meal a day. For example, you could begin by eating oatmeal topped with nuts or seeds for breakfast, Petersen said. Or you could try following the portfolio diet at lunch by making grain bowls with quinoa or brown rice topped with chickpeas, veggies and tofu.

Even just snacking on unsalted nuts, apples and peanut butter, or carrots and hummus is part of this diet, Hull noted.

Let’s be real: Going from a meat-based diet to a totally vegan meal plan is a big ask. Luckily, you don’t have to go fully vegan to see cardiovascular benefits.

“I think you can still incorporate the key features of the portfolio diet [such as whole grains, nuts, vegetables, beans and fruit] without excluding animal products if you want to include those,” Petersen said. “We have a lot of evidence for viscous fiber, plant sterols, soy and nuts reducing cholesterol levels, so if you just ate more of those foods, you would see cholesterol lowering.”

It’s true that you’ll get the greatest health benefits out of this diet if you follow it to the letter. But even just following it when you can is also good for you.

“The more adherent you can be to a diet like the portfolio diet ― or any predominantly whole food, plant-based diet ― the more benefit you can expect to get in terms of lowering risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as lowering risk of cancer and certain metabolic diseases as well,” Hull said.