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. 2019 Jul 9;11(7):1553.
doi: 10.3390/nu11071553.

A Provegetarian Food Pattern Emphasizing Preference for Healthy Plant-Derived Foods Reduces the Risk of Overweight/Obesity in the SUN Cohort

Clara Gómez-Donoso  1   2 , Miguel Ángel Martínez-González  1   2   3   4 , J Alfredo Martínez  2   3   5 , Alfredo Gea  1   2   3 , Julen Sanz-Serrano  6 , Federico J A Perez-Cueto  7 , Maira Bes-Rastrollo  8   9   10
Affiliations

A Provegetarian Food Pattern Emphasizing Preference for Healthy Plant-Derived Foods Reduces the Risk of Overweight/Obesity in the SUN Cohort

Clara Gómez-Donoso et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Provegetarian diets (i.e., preference for plant-derived foods but not exclusion of animal foods) have been associated with a reduced risk of long-term weight gain and could be more easily embraced than strict vegetarian diets. However, not all plant-derived foods are equally healthy. In the "Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra" (SUN) cohort, we prospectively evaluated the association between different provegetarian food patterns and the incidence of overweight/obesity in 11,554 participants with initial body mass index <25 kg/m2. A provegetarian food pattern (FP) was built by assigning positive scores to plant foods and reverse scores to animal foods. A healthful and an unhealthful provegetarian FP, which distinguished between healthy (fruits/vegetables/whole grains/nuts/legumes/olive oil/coffee) and less-healthy plant foods (fruit juices/potatoes/refined grains/pastries/sugary beverages), were also built. A total of 2320 new cases of overweight or obesity were identified after a median follow-up of 10.3 years. Higher baseline conformity with the overall provegetarian FP was inversely associated with overweight/obesity (HR comparing extreme quintiles: 0.85; 95% CI: 0.75 to 0.96; p-trend: 0.014). This association was stronger for the healthful FP (HR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.67 to 0.90; p-trend: <0.001) and was not apparent for the unhealthful FP (HR: 1.07; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.23; p-trend: 0.551). In a large prospective cohort of relatively young adults, better conformity with a healthy provegetarian diet was associated with a reduced long-term risk of overweight/obesity, whereas no consistent trend was found for a FP that emphasized less-healthy plant foods.

Keywords: dietary patterns; epidemiology; nutrition; obesity; overweight; prospective cohort study; provegetarian; vegetarian.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart depicting the selection process among participants of the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) cohort.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of overweight/obesity according to baseline quintiles of the provegetarian food patterns.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Sensitivity Analyses (results under different scenarios). Hazard Ratios (95% CI) of incident overweight/obesity for extreme quintiles (Q5 vs. Q1) of adherence to the overall, healthful and unhealthful provegetarian food patterns.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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