Fried foods, salty snacks and meat, in other words the typical Western diet accounts for some 30 percent of heart attack risk worldwide, Canadian researchers said Monday. The study published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association showed that those who used Western diet had a 35 percent increased risk of heart attack than those who don’t have the habit of eating fried food.

For the study, Salim Yusuf, D.Phil. at McMaster University in Canada and colleagues examined the association between dietary patterns and risk of heart attack in about 16,000 people in 52 countries. The researchers created a dietary risk score questionnaire based on 19 food groups and then asked 5,561 heart attack patients and 10,646 people with known heart disease to fill out their survey. That’s how they came to the 35 per cent higher risk result.

People eating an "Oriental" diet (a diet that contains tofu and soy and other sauces) had an average risk of heart attack compared to the others. The researchers said the tofu-rich diet might be neutral rather than protective due to its high sodium composition.

The study also accounted for other risk factors including age, smoking, sex, physical activity, body mass index and geographical region in assessing overall heart attack risk.

These results are very relevant because this is the first time such a thorough study on eating habits has been made. Scientists identified three dietary patterns in the world: Oriental, mentioned above, prudent - higher intake of fruits and vegetables and the western pattern.

“The study findings indicate that the same relationships between food and heart disease observed in Western countries are also present in other global regions,” said Salim Yusuf, study author and professor of medicine at McMaster University.