Eating veggies won't protect your heart, study says, but critics disagree

Eating veggies, especially cooked ones, doesn't reduce your risk of heart disease over time, according to a new analysis of the diets of nearly 400,000 U.K. adults. But experts quickly took exception to the study's conclusion.

Which makes the findings of a new analysis of the diets of nearly 400,000 U.K. adults published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition rather startling: Eating veggies, especially cooked ones, doesn't reduce your risk of heart disease over time.

"Our large study did not find evidence for a protective effect of vegetable intake on the occurrence of CVD (cardiovascular disease)," said Qi Feng, an epidemiologist at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, in a statement.

While the study found eating raw veggies could protect against heart disease, cooked vegetables did not. Any benefit went away when researchers factored in lifestyle factors such as physical activity, educational level, smoking, drinking, fruit intake, red and processed meat consumption, and use of mineral and vitamin supplements.

"Instead, our analyses show that the seemingly protective effect of vegetable intake against CVD risk is very likely to be accounted for by bias ... related to differences in socioeconomic situation and lifestyle," Feng said.