While eating an avocado daily won’t dramatically change your heart health score, it can improve your diet, sleep, and blood lipids—proving that small dietary changes still count!
Study: Effect of Daily Avocado Intake on Cardiovascular Health Assessed by Life's Essential 8: An Ancillary Study of HAT, a Randomized Controlled Trial. Image Credit: baibaz / Shutterstock
In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers in the United States evaluated the effects of daily avocado intake on cardiovascular health metrics, as assessed by Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), in adults with abdominal obesity.
Background
Did you know that cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounts for nearly one-third of all deaths worldwide?
Despite decades of research, millions continue to suffer from heart-related conditions. While a heart-healthy diet is widely recommended, the role of individual foods in improving cardiovascular health remains unclear.
Avocados, known for their rich monounsaturated fats and essential nutrients, are often linked to better heart health. But can a simple habit, like eating an avocado daily, make a real difference?
This study seeks to uncover whether a single-food intervention can meaningfully impact cardiovascular health. Given the rising rates of obesity and metabolic disorders, it is crucial to identify accessible dietary strategies that can make a measurable impact on public health.
However, measuring overall cardiovascular health is complex, and single-food interventions may not always translate into broad improvements in health metrics like Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), which evaluates multiple lifestyle factors.
Further research is needed to determine the extent to which individual food choices influence long-term cardiovascular health outcomes.
About the Study
A randomized controlled trial was conducted across four clinical sites in the United States, involving participants aged 25 years and older with abdominal obesity.
Participants were required to have a low habitual avocado intake (≤2 avocados per month) and were randomly assigned to either an Avocado-Supplemented Diet Group or a Habitual Diet Group.
The intervention group was instructed to consume one avocado daily for 26 weeks, while the control group maintained their usual diet with restricted avocado intake.
The primary outcome was the change in the LE8 score, which measures cardiovascular health across eight domains: diet, physical activity, body mass index, blood lipids, nicotine exposure, blood glucose, blood pressure, and sleep health.
Baseline and 26-week data were collected through clinical assessments, dietary recalls, and standardized questionnaires.
Statistical analyses were conducted using general linear models to evaluate between-group differences in the LE8 score and its components. Sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the accuracy of the findings.
Notably, while the LE8 score is widely used to assess cardiovascular health, its sensitivity to detect small but meaningful dietary changes—such as consuming one additional food daily—remains uncertain.
Study Results
The analytical sample included 969 participants (484 in the Avocado-Supplemented Diet Group and 485 in the Habitual Diet Group), with a mean age of 51 years and a mean body mass index (BMI) of 33.0 kg/m².
No significant between-group difference was observed in the overall LE8 score after 26 weeks (0.79 points [95% CI, −0.41 to 2.00], confirming that avocado intake alone did not lead to a measurable improvement in total cardiovascular health). Sensitivity analyses confirmed this result when restricting the analysis to participants with complete data across all eight LE8 components.
While the total LE8 score remained unchanged, individual component analyses revealed improvements in specific health markers.
The Avocado-Supplemented Diet Group exhibited a statistically significant increase in diet quality (+3.53 points [95% CI, 1.38–5.68]), blood lipids (+3.46 points [95% CI, 1.03–5.90]), and sleep health (+3.20 points [95% CI, 0.38–6.02]) compared with the Habitual Diet Group.
However, changes in other components, including physical activity, body mass index, blood glucose, blood pressure, and nicotine exposure, were not significant.
Further subgroup analyses revealed no significant differences in cardiovascular health outcomes across sex, race, age, or baseline health status.
Interestingly, among Hispanic and Latino participants, the LE8 score decreased in the Avocado-Supplemented Diet Group, primarily due to lower physical activity scores. The study authors noted that this finding contrasts with prior research, where avocado consumption was associated with increased physical activity in Hispanic and Latino individuals. However, in this study, physical activity was measured using a simple yes/no question rather than detailed tracking, which may have influenced the results.
Additional secondary outcomes, including hepatic fat fraction, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, and waist circumference, did not show significant between-group differences.
These findings reinforce that while avocados can improve some cardiovascular health markers, dietary changes need to be broader—beyond a single food—to produce significant changes in total cardiovascular health scores.
Conclusions
To summarize, daily avocado consumption for 26 weeks did not significantly improve the total LE8 cardiovascular health score in adults with abdominal obesity. However, significant improvements were observed in specific health domains, including diet quality, sleep health, and blood lipids.
One key takeaway from the study is that single-food interventions, while beneficial for individual health markers, may not be sufficient to produce meaningful changes in comprehensive health indices like LE8. Instead, larger dietary and lifestyle adjustments are likely required.
For individuals, incorporating avocados into daily diets can be a simple yet effective strategy to enhance diet quality and lipid profiles.
On a community level, nutrition education programs promoting accessible heart-healthy foods like avocados may help combat rising obesity and metabolic disorders.
Globally, with CVDs contributing significantly to healthcare costs and mortality, dietary interventions, even at a small scale, can support preventative health measures and inform policy decisions promoting healthier food choices.
It is also important to note that this study was funded by the Avocado Nutrition Center. However, the researchers emphasized that the funding body had no role in data analysis or interpretation.