You might want to rethink tonight's steak dinner.

The typical western diet of red meat, fried foods, dairy products and salty snacks is responsible for 30 per cent of the world's heart attacks, a new study suggests.

For their research, scientists at Hamilton's McMaster University analyzed data from the dietary patterns of 16,000 people in 52 countries.

They found the best diet is one that includes eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, which is linked to a 30 per cent decrease in heart attack risk.

The diet is more effective at lowering heart attack risk than many drugs currently on the market, study author Dr. Salim Yusef told CTV News.

"What we've shown is if you eat a healthy diet you can actually reduce the risk of heart attack by about 30 to 40 per cent. That is bigger than most drugs we have for protecting against heart disease," Yusef said.

"It's even bigger than an angioplasty or bypass."

The healthy diet was more effective than the traditional oriental diet that consists of tofu and soy, which the authors found to have no effect on heart attack risk.

In contrast, the Western diet was found to boost heart attack risk by 35 per cent.

"What was interesting is that this pattern of a good diet or a bad diet had the same effect in different parts of the world," Yusef said.

"So we can encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables whether they are in India or China or Africa or North America, and to eat less salty and fatty foods."

Yusef suggests augmenting taxes on harmful greasy foods as one possible solution to the Western diet crisis.

"Just like with tobacco, we could have safety warrants for foods with high salt," Yusef said.

The findings are published in the journal Circulation.

Diet, which varies greatly throughout different regions in the world, is a major factor that influences heart attack risk, the authors noted.

Several published studies have already concluded that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, especially the green, leafy variety, reduces the risk of heart attack, even when allowing for other risk factors.

Research has also found that fried and salted foods increase heart attack rates because they boost risk factors such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

The findings support the age-old message that five to 10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day are "the recipe for preventing heart disease," Dr. Marco DiBuono of The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada told CTV News.

The findings are particularly important now that the western diet has become more popular in other regions of the world, Yusef said.

With a report from CTV's medical specialist Avis Favaro and producer Elizabeth St. Philip

Abstract:

Dietary Patterns and the Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction in 52 Countries

Results of the INTERHART Study

Romaina Iqbal, PhD; Sonia Anand, MD; Stephanie Ounpuu, PhD; Shofiqul Islam, MSc; Xiaohe Zhang, MSc; Sumathy Rangarajan, MSc; Jephat Chifamba, DPhil; Ali Al-Hinai, MD; Matyas Keltai, MD; Salim Yusuf, DPhil; on behalf of the INTERHEART Study Investigators

Background: Diet is a major modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease, but it varies markedly in different regions of the world. The objectives of the present study were to assess the association between dietary patterns and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) globally.

Methods and Results: INTERHEART is a standardized case-control study involving participants from 52 countries. The present analysis included 5761 cases and 10 646 control subjects. We identified 3 major dietary patterns using factor analysis: Oriental (high intake of tofu and soy and other sauces), Western (high in fried foods, salty snacks, eggs, and meat), and prudent (high in fruit and vegetables). We observed an inverse association between the prudent pattern and AMI, with higher levels being protective. Compared with the first quartile, the adjusted ORs were 0.78 (95% CI 0.69 to 0.88) for the second quartile, 0.66 (95% CI 0.59 to 0.75) for the third, and 0.70 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.80) for the fourth (P for trend <0.001). The Western pattern showed a U-shaped association with AMI (compared with the first quartile, the adjusted OR for the second quartile was 0.87 [95% CI 0.78 to 0.98], whereas it was 1.12 [95% CI 1.00 to 1.25] for the third quartile and 1.35 [95% CI 1.21 to 1.51] for the fourth quartile; P for trend <0.001), but the Oriental pattern demonstrated no relationship with AMI. Compared with the first quartile, the OR of a dietary risk score derived from meat, salty snacks, fried foods, fruits, green leafy vegetables, cooked vegetables, and other raw vegetables (higher score indicating a poorer diet) increased with each quartile: second quartile 1.29 (95% CI 1.17 to 1.42), third quartile 1.67 (95% CI 1.51 to 1.83), and fourth quartile 1.92 (95% CI 1.74 to 2.11; P for trend <0.001). The adjusted population attributable risk of AMI for the top 3 quartiles compared with the bottom quartile of the dietary risk score was 30%.

Conclusions: An unhealthy dietary intake, assessed by a simple dietary risk score, increases the risk of AMI globally and accounts for ~30% of the population-attributable risk.