Eating an avocado a day keeps the doctor away.
A new study finds that eating one avocado per day may have health benefits, including improved sleep and diet quality.
“Previous studies have shown that avocado consumption is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” Janhavi J. Damani, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University who worked on the study, told Healio.
The study, recently presented at the Nutrition 2024 conference in Chicago, builds on previous research looking at the health benefits of avocados and suggests that avocados “may improve cardiovascular risk factors by reducing total cholesterol and LDL-C without adversely affecting body weight,” according to Damani.
For the current study, the research team conducted an analysis of the Habitual Eating and Avocado Trial (HAT), in which more than 1,000 participants were randomly selected to either eat one avocado every day for six months or continue their usual diet but eat fewer than two avocados per month.
In his analysis, Damani and his team assessed the impact of daily avocado consumption on heart health in people with abdominal obesity, according to Helio.
The research team used the American Heart Association’s cardiovascular health guidelines, Life’s Essential 8, to assess diet quality, blood glucose levels, blood pressure, BMI, blood lipids, physical activity, and sleep health, all of which are important for cardiovascular health, in 969 HAT participants.
Damani told Healio that while those who maintained their lifestyle and cut down on avocado consumption saw lower cardiovascular health scores, “the same trend was not seen in the avocado supplementation group.”
While there was no significant difference in LE8 scores between the groups, people who consumed avocado daily had improved scores for sleep health, diet quality, and blood lipids such as cholesterol.
“There is growing evidence to suggest that there is a movement beyond incorporating individual foods to adopting healthy eating patterns to achieve clinically meaningful improvements in cardiovascular risk factors,” Damani said.
The study, funded by the Hass Avocado Commission, could spur further research into the “complex links” between certain foods and cardiovascular health.
However, she told Healio that health professionals should “place more emphasis on improving diet quality through beneficial changes in overall eating patterns.”
