The NO FRY ZONE Team

CREDIT: Robert Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images Diets heavy in fried foods, salty snacks and meat account for about 35 percent of heart attacks globally, researchers report.

Hold the fries, samosas or fried won tons: People who eat diets high in fried foods and meat are 35 per cent more likely than "prudent" eaters to suffer acute heart attacks, a global study led by Canadian researchers shows.

And in a surprising finding, high loading on tofu and soy appears to have no effect one way or the other on the risk of myocardial infarction.

"What we found was that the prudent diet, which is very simple - lots of fruits and vegetables, less fried food and red meat - was protective," says senior author Dr. Salim Yusuf. "It was protective in every part of the world, in men and women, old and young - everybody. And the degree of protection was quite substantial."

Overall, the study found that an unhealthy diet accounts for about 30 per cent of heart attack risk worldwide.

The traditional high-fat Western diet has long been implicated in heart disease. But a significant portion of the foods Westerners eat today aren't traditional meat-and-potato dishes. "It's other things too," says Yusuf, professor of medicine at McMaster University and director of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences.

"For good reasons, a lot of people now eat ethnic foods, like Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Thai, Indian. It's useful to know, is there a common thread across these diets that will tell you whether certain things in the diet are protective or harmful or neutral?

"What we found is, irrespective of which kind of diets you use, if you eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetable and less fried food and less meat, it's good for you."

An estimated 70,000 heart attacks occur each year in Canada, and approximately 19,000 Canadians die each year as a result, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

For their study, researchers analyzed 5,761 heart attack cases from 52 countries, including Canada, and compared them to 10,646 people without known heart disease.

Three major patterns of diet were identified:

- "Oriental": A diet high on tofu and soy and other sauces.

- "Western": High in fried foods, salty snacks, eggs and meat.

- "Prudent": High in fruit and vegetables.

People were scored according to how many times a day, week or month they ate eggs, grains, red and white meats, fish, dairy, raw vegetables, fruits and other foods. The more they consumed of an "adverse" food, such as red meat or fried or salty snacks, the higher the score.

After adjusting for smoking, cholesterol, diabetes and other risk factors, prudent eaters had a 30 per cent lower risk of heart attack compared to people who ate little or no fruits and vegetables.

Those who scored high on the "Western" diet were 35 per cent more likely to have a heart attack versus those who ate little or no fried foods and meat.

"Most people in North America would think of french fries, pizza and potato chips as the big offenders here," says co-author Dr. Sonia Anand, professor of medicine at McMaster.

"That's true, but we also include into that things like samosas and pakoras and fried won ton so that this message applies generally to people from India, people from China - that deep frying is not good for you."

It's probably due to the type of fat used for frying and salty snacks, the researchers report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Saturated fats can raise blood cholesterol.

The "Oriental" pattern of eating had a "neutral" effect, meaning it was neither harmful nor beneficial. "We were surprised. We thought there would be a difference," Yusuf says.

It could be due to the higher sodium content of soy and other sauces. High amounts of sodium increase blood pressure. So while some components of the "Oriental" diet may protect against cardiovascular disease, others may increase the risk, neutralizing any relationship, the researchers say.

"Chinese people tend to have lower rates of heart disease, but it's because they don't have a western diet," Yusuf says. "Their diet is avoiding the bad things in the western diet, but it could be even better if they increased the amounts of fruits and vegetables they consumed."

Fruits and vegetables are thought to help reduce inflammation, hardening of the arteries, and lower cholesterol, says Toronto cardiologist Dr. Beth Abramson, a spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, which helped fund the INTERHEART study.

But it's also true "that if you're eating healthy, you're less likely to be eating the fried foods, the salty foods and fatty meats," Abramson says.

In this study, the group that consumed the highest levels of fruits and vegetables were eating "a couple of portions every day," Yusuf says.

"If you can have four or five servings a day, it certainly is the best." Canada's Food Guide recommends seven to 10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day for adults aged 19 to 50, and seven servings daily for adults aged 51 and older.

A medium fruit or half a cup of fresh, frozen or canned vegetables makes up one Food Guide serving.

Anand says policy-makers need to make fruits and vegetables less expensive. "Right now, if you look around the world you'll see that it's easier to eat a poor diet than it is a healthy diet.

"If we can change this, we stand to potentially prevent a substantial amount of heart disease."

skirkey@canwest.com