Tell me what you eat, so I can tell you how healthy you are! Probably you have heard these words before and asked what exactly their sense is. Well, doctors have long encouraged people to have a healthy diet based on vegetables and fruits and less meat and salt. And they were right to do so, as many studies have showed that such a diet has great outcomes on our health. On the other hand, a diet heavy in fried foods, salty snacks and meat has proved unhealthy, a conclusion also drawn by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. More exactly, they found that this diet is responsible for 30 percent of the world’s heart attacks compared to other diets.

The study, called INTERHEART, followed dietary trends among more than 16,000 participants in 52 countries who were recruited between 1999 and 2003. One third of them, or 5,761 people already had a heart attack when being interviewed; the remaining 10,646, had no known heart disease, including angina, and did not suffer from diabetes, hypertension or high cholesterol. Their age was between 53 and 57 years old.

Researchers discovered three dietary patterns in the world: Oriental, which include higher intake of tofu, soy and other sauces; Prudent based on fruits and vegetables and Western, characterized by a higher intake of fried foods, salty snacks, eggs and meat.

The results of the study showed that people who consumed the Prudent diet had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack compared to people who ate little or no fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, people who consumed the Western diet had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack compared to people who consumed little or no fried foods and meat. The Oriental diet was found to have little impact on heart attack risk.

“The objective of this study was to understand the modifiable risk factors of heart attacks at a global level. This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in Western countries exist in different regions of the world,” said Salim Yusuf, DPhil, the study's senior author in the study published in the Oct. 21 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Yusuf is a professor of medicine at McMaster University and is director of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada.

This is not the first time when the Western diet was associated with a negative effect on people’s heart. A study published in the same journal at the beginning of this year found that people eating more servings of meat a day increased their risk of metabolic syndrome by 26 percent compared with those eating meat twice a week. Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Also diet soda, one can a day, increased risk by 34 percent. Those eating their food mostly fried face a 25 percent higher risk of getting the syndrome than those eating the lowest amounts. The study was carried by researchers at the University of Minnesota led by Dr. Lyn Steffen, an associated professor of epidemiology.