An Avocado A Day Keeps Bad Cholesterol At Bay: Study

Eating avocados daily can help keep all those nasty and bad LDL cholesterol at bay.

This information comes from a recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, where a team of researchers found that the participants who ate an avocado on a daily basis had significantly lower bad cholesterol levels, alongside an improvement in their diet quality.

The research funded by the Hass Avocado Board involved 1,008 participants and ran for six months. The participants were randomly assigned to either the Avocado Supplemented Diet Group or Habitaul Diet Group. At the time of the randomization, 72% of the participants were women, and the mean age was 50.

The researchers wanted to see whether eating avocados daily could help people reduce visceral adiposity and other health-related outcomes affecting body weight, body mass index, and quality of life.

The participants in the avocado-a-day group were given a regular supply of fresh avocados by the Hass Avocado Board, alongside written instructions on how to ripen or prepare them.

After six months, the researchers found that people in the avocado-a-day group had no weight gain and improved their diet quality by about 8 points on a 100-point scale. Additionally, the results revealed a decrease in total cholesterol and “bad” LDL cholesterol levels.

According to study author Dr. Alice H. Lichtenstein, a senior scientist and director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Tea at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, adding superfoods or health foods to one’s diet doesn’t necessarily translate into significant health benefits.

“The study found that simply adding a ‘healthy food’ in terms of fats and nutrients, in this case, an avocado, to one’s diet did not result in clinical benefits. However, there were no negative effects, and it was associated with a benefit, an improvement in overall diet quality,” Lichtenstein said.

However, the study did have some limitations. For example, the researchers didn’t collect data about the participants’ medications. They also had to conduct the research during the COVID-19 pandemic.