Eating a healthy diet was linked with a lower risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, cancer or other diseases among a population of low-income individuals living in the Southeast. The study by first author Danxia Yu, PhD, Vanderbilt research fellow, and lead author Wei Zheng, MD, PhD, MPH, director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and chief of the Division of Epidemiology, was published May 26 in PLOS Medicine. Investigators from the International Epidemiology Institute, the Harvard School of Public Health, and Meharry Medical College were also involved in the study.
The investigators analyzed data from the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS) – which includes 84,735 adults, ages 40-79, recruited from 2002- 2009, mostly through community health centers serving low-income populations in 12 Southeastern states. More than half of the participants had an annual household income of less than $15,000 and 65 percent were African-American.
Of the 77,572 participants with follow-up information over a mean period of 6.2 years, 6,906 participants died – 2,244 from cardiovascular disease, 1,794 from cancer and 2,550 from other diseases. After controlling for factors such as age, weight, exercise, smoking and prior history of some chronic diseases, the investigators found participants who ate the healthiest diet had an approximately 20 percent lower risk of death from those diseases than those with the least healthy diet.