Fatty meats, processed foods of ‘western lunch’ raise heart disease risk

Taking a regular lunch break with cheeseburgers and fries can shorten your life, but loading your plate with veggies could do the opposite.

These include the results of a new study that examines the potential health effects not just on what people eat, but when.

Researchers found that US adults who preferred a “Western” lunch – high in cheese, processed meats, refined grains, fat, and sugar – were at increased risk of premature death from heart disease.

The same was true for people who had a preference for potato chips and other “starchy” snacks between meals.

At the other end of the spectrum were people who got lots of vegetables – especially for dinner. During the study period, they died almost a third less than people whose plates rarely contained vegetables.

However, people who ate the most vegetables for lunch did not show such benefit.

Study author Wei Wei and colleagues from Harbin Medical University in China said the results suggest the potential importance of timing in food selection.

However, other experts stressed that overall nutritional quality matters.

“That’s one of the results of this study,” said Lauri Wright, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of North Florida. “It still comes down to nutritional quality.”

The fact that unhealthy lunches in particular have been linked to harmful effects doesn’t mean these foods are okay at dinner, said Wright, who is also the spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

So-called western lunches could be a sign of many other things, she said, including a busy, stressful daily routine that involves lots of take-out.

Similarly, Wright said, vegetable-filled dinners could mean other things about people: they could spend more time planning meals, for example.

There’s no reason, Wright added, that a lunch full of vegetables isn’t healthy.

According to Dr. Anne Thorndike, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, raised “some interesting questions” about the timing of certain types of meals and snacks.

For example, she said, it is possible that a veggie meal in the evening might be more beneficial than at noon. Or maybe people tend to have “more diverse and nutritious” vegetables at dinner, Thorndike said.

But those are research questions, says Thorndike, who is also the chairman of the American Heart Association’s nutrition committee.

She stressed that this study “is not intended to be a healthy diet guideline” and agreed that people should focus on overall nutritional quality.

“Having two to three servings of vegetables at any time of the day – in addition to two to three servings of fruit – remains the priority,” said Thorndike.

The results, published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association, are based on 21,500 U.S. adults who participated in a federal study between 2003 and 2014.

In general, people who ate more plant-based foods had a lower risk of death during the study period, while those who preferred meat, cheese, and processed foods were at higher risk.

But timing seemed to matter: a quarter of the people who ate the most western lunches were 44% more likely to die of heart disease than the neighborhood with the least western lunchtime habits.

In contrast, people who ate a lot of fruit for lunch were a third less likely to die from heart disease than those who inherited fruit during their lunch meal, the results showed.

Meanwhile, the risk of dying from heart problems was 23% lower and the risk of dying from any cause 31% lower. These people ate a number of vegetables as well as beans.

There was one habit that seemed bad at any time of the day: eating starchy snacks like potato chips and pretzels. People who ate these foods after a meal were over 50% more likely to die from heart disease or other causes than those who ate the fewest starchy snacks.

It’s advisable to cut back on these foods during the day, Thorndike said.

And while nighttime snacking has a bad rap, she found that there is nothing inherently wrong with that timing. It’s just that people often eat starchy or sweet treats.

Wright agreed. “People who eat at night don’t usually choose celery,” she said.

More information

The American Heart Association has advice on healthy eating.

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