Most people believe that ditching meat for plants is a "get out of jail free" card for heart health.

We have been told for decades that if it comes from a plant, your arteries will thank you.

That is a dangerous oversimplification.

A new study just blew a hole in the "plant-based" halo.

Researchers tracked over 63,000 people and found that a certain type of plant-based diet doesn't just fail to protect you.

It might actually be killing you.

The Bottom Line

Eating a plant-based diet full of ultra-processed foods can increase your risk of heart disease by 40 percent. If you want the benefits of plants, you have to eat them in their natural form, not out of a factory-sealed box.

We often think of "junk food" as burgers and bacon.

But there is a new category of junk food hiding behind a green leaf logo.

This study, published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, looked at 63,835 adults over the course of nearly a decade.

The researchers didn't just ask "do you eat meat?"

They looked at how the plants were prepared.

Here is where it gets weird.

You could be eating foods that look healthy on paper (low sugar, low salt, high fiber) but if they are "ultra-processed," the benefits vanish.

I’m talking about industrial wholemeal breads, canned soups with additives, and ready-made pasta dishes.

Even if these foods are technically "nutritious," the processing itself seems to create a problem for your heart.

The data showed three distinct paths you can take when you go plant-based.

This means that a "bad" plant-based diet is just as damaging as a diet heavy in processed meats.

Why does a plant-based nugget hurt you while a chickpea helps you?

Think of your digestive system as a precision-tuned engine.

Whole plants are the high-grade fuel the engine was built for. They come with fiber "nets" that slow down sugar absorption and keep your gut bacteria happy.

Ultra-processed plant foods are different.

To make a plant-based burger or a shelf-stable soup, factories strip the plants down. They use high heat, high pressure, and chemical emulsifiers.

This turns the food into a "biological ghost."

It looks like food, but the structure is gone.

When you eat it, your body absorbs the nutrients too fast, spiking your insulin.

The additives and emulsifiers can also irritate your gut lining, causing low-grade inflammation.

Your heart doesn't care if the inflammation came from a pepperoni slice or a processed soy patty. It just knows it is under attack.

The researchers used the French NutriNet-Santé cohort.

They followed these 63,000 people for an average of nine years, with some followed for fifteen.

They used something called the Nova classification to rank how "messed with" the food was.

They also used a nutritional score to see if the food was high in "bad" things like salt and saturated fat.

The results were consistent. Even when the nutrition labels looked okay, the high level of industrial processing was a massive red flag for heart health.

If you want to live longer, you need to change how you look at labels.

Don't just look for "Plant-Based" or "Vegan."

Look for how many steps it took to get that food from the dirt to your plate.

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Till next time,

ReviveMyHealth