Blood pressure

Vegan diets come with the lowest blood pressure

By WhyStopHarmingAnimals.com

People who eat no animal products have less high blood pressure than people who do[1][2], and when omnivores are put on vegetarian diets in controlled trials, their blood pressure falls[3].

Four diet groups in Britain

EPIC-Oxford compared meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans among 11,004 British adults, in a 2002 report in Public Health Nutrition[1]. Self-reported high blood pressure ran from 15.0% in male meat eaters down to 5.8% in male vegans[1], and from 12.1% to 7.7% in women[1]. Vegans also had the lowest systolic and diastolic readings of the four groups[1].

Much of that gap tracked differences in body mass index, so the diet was not acting alone[1]. Part of what it does for blood pressure it seems to do through weight[1].

A 2017 review in the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology looked at the same four-way comparison and found that vegans carried the least hypertension[2]. Its author concluded that a mostly or entirely plant-based diet is prudent both for preventing high blood pressure and for treating it[2].

What the trials show

A 2014 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine gathered 39 studies[3]. In the seven controlled trials, eating vegetarian lowered systolic pressure by 4.8 mmHg[3] and diastolic pressure by 2.2 mmHg compared with omnivorous diets[3]. Across the 32 observational studies the gaps were larger, 6.9 and 4.7 mmHg[3].

The trials are the stronger design, and theirs is the more conservative figure. The wider gap in the observational studies probably includes other ways in which vegetarians differ from the people they were compared with, which is the same pattern the BMI result from EPIC-Oxford points to[1].

Meat and poultry push the other way

A 2018 meta-analysis in the Journal of Human Hypertension pooled 10 prospective cohorts and 351,819 people[4]. The highest intakes of red meat, processed or unprocessed, came with 22% more hypertension[4], and the highest intakes of poultry with 15% more[4]. Eggs ran the other way in the three cohorts that measured them[4].

Chicken is often pitched as the lighter choice for people worried about their blood pressure, and in these cohorts it carried extra risk too[4].