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UK researchers studied the diets of more than 25,000 people in the UK and compared what they ate to their blood pressure, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
Most of the other research relies on participants keeping food diaries, but these are often buggy due to the tendency to report less protein and sugar intake, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Also, the amount of flavonoids in certain foods can vary widely. For example, the amount found in tea, one of the major sources in the UK diet, ranges from 10 milligrams per 100 grams of tea to 330 milligrams per 100 grams of tea.
“This is important, high-quality investigation of some physiological effects of dietary flavonoids in a large UK population,” said Ian Johnson, nutrition researcher and Emeritus Fellow of the Quadram Institute Bioscience in the UK. Johnson was not involved in the investigation.
“Its importance lies in the use of objective quantifiable biomarkers of flavonoid intake, as opposed to estimates based on what are necessarily imprecise measures of food intake and composition,” he told the Science Media Center in London.
“Using this approach, the authors were able to show that systolic blood pressure was lower in participants who consumed the most flavonoids, compared to those who consumed the least.”
Relatively small effect
The researchers found that the difference in blood pressure between people with the lowest 10% flavanol intake and those with the highest 10% intake was between 2 and 4 mmHg.
This is a “relatively small” effect, Johnson said.
However, the study said it was comparable to changes in blood pressure seen in those who followed the Mediterranean diet or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) or moderately reduced salt intake.
The study did not find a link between flavanol intake and the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, nor was there a link to mortality, either from cardiovascular disease or from any other cause.
“In contrast to self-reported dietary data, nutritional biomarkers can address the enormous variability in food composition. Therefore, we can confidently attribute the associations we observed to flavanol intake,” said Gunter Kuhnle, a professor in the department. of Food and Nutrition from the University of Reading. nutritional sciences, who led the study.
The study said larger-scale trials will be required to test its observational finding that blood pressure can be explained by differences in flavanol intake.
Flavonoids are a subgroup of flavonoids, found in foods like tea (mainly green but also black) and fruits like apples, pears, and berries. In the UK, tea is the most important source in the diet of most people. In the United States, Kuhnle said the main sources are likely to be berries and apples.
In plants, the compounds act primarily to defend the plant against predators or pests. For humans, many of these compounds have a biological effect, Kuhnle said. Although the exact mechanism is not understood, they seem to push the correct biological buttons.
“Tea, apples, berries, nuts, and many other plant foods contain flavonoids, (and) These are bioactive components of food that are known to be associated with lower risk factors for cardiovascular disease, as shown in this large and very well conducted study, “said Ada Garcia, Senior Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the University. from Glasgow who was not involved in the research, he told the Science Media Center in London.
“Investing in research that provides better estimates of dietary intake, such as the surrogate biomarkers used in this study, is a big step toward a better understanding of the interaction between diet and disease.”
