ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes some of the knowledge that health care professionals have collected regarding diet and nutritional approaches to reduce risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), focusing mostly on the human experimental evidence. Some specific examples of dietary patterns with established cardiovascular benefits include Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, Portfolio diet, and Mediterranean diet. Although following a "low-fat" diet is a familiar recommendation for improving lipid profiles and cardiovascular health, this generic recommendation does not have robust evidence for affecting cardiovascular outcomes. Increasingly popular for weight loss, high-protein and low-carbohydrate diets have mixed evidence for health effects. The DASH diet is a comprehensive dietary approach developed with the specific goal of helping to reduce blood pressure. The Portfolio diet was specifically designed to incorporate foods known to help lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Dietary patterns can be flexible and modified to reach clinical goals. A nutritional approach to CVD treatment would be different from a model targeting prevention.
