#507: Does a Higher Portfolio Diet Score Reduce Heart Disease? – Andrea Glenn, PhD
Sigma Nutrition Radio
Danny Lennon
4.8 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Links:
- Episode page (with study links)
- Subscribe to Premium
- Join Sigma email newsletter
About This Episode:
The Portfolio diet is a nutritional approach that has garnered attention for its ability to reduce blood lipids and thus improve cardiovascular health.
While past intervention trials have demonstrated significant reductions in blood lipids, a critical aspect often overlooked is the long-term impact, both in terms of adherence and disease outcomes.
A recent study aimed to address this by looking at disease risk across three cohorts: the Nurses' Health Study I, Nurses' Health Study II, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
The study made use of a Portfolio Diet Score (PDS), a comprehensive metric that evaluates the diet's efficacy based on specific components.
These components include positive rankings for plant proteins (especially from legumes), nuts and seeds, viscous fiber sources, phytosterols (mg/day), and plant monounsaturated fat sources. Conversely, the PDS negatively ranks foods high in saturated fat and cholesterol.
In this episode, Dr. Andrea Glenn, the lead author of this study, discusses the intricacies of the research, providing insights into its findings and shedding light on how these findings resonate within the broader landscape of literature.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. You are very welcome to the podcast. My name is |
| 0:19.3 | Danny Lennon and this is episode 507 of the show. |
| 0:24.4 | On today's podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Andrea Glenn, who is a postdoctoral |
| 0:29.9 | research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health and is also a registered dietitian. |
| 0:37.1 | Her current work, as well as her previous work at the |
| 0:40.1 | University of Toronto, has been centered on looking at the role of the portfolio diet in preventing |
| 0:46.9 | cardiovascular disease risk. So the portfolio diet, as you may remember from previous episodes |
| 0:52.0 | where we've discussed this is a particular type of dietary pattern aimed at lowering cholesterol or blood lipids |
| 0:59.0 | and therefore, in turn, lowering cardiovascular disease risk. |
| 1:03.8 | And her work has involved a number of different areas from epidemiology to clinical trial data |
| 1:08.9 | to some metabolomics, as we may mention. But in today's episode, |
| 1:12.6 | we're going to particularly look at the portfolio diet and some of Dr. Glenn's work in this area |
| 1:18.4 | through the lens of her most recent publication, which was published in circulation in late |
| 1:22.9 | 2023, which examined the portfolio diet, or more specifically, a portfolio diet score and its impact on |
| 1:30.2 | cardiovascular disease risk in three particular cohorts. So the Nurses Health Study 1, Nurses Health |
| 1:36.2 | Study 2, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. So those three cohorts were included. So we're going to |
| 1:42.6 | use that as the main backbone for this |
| 1:44.6 | discussion, but also pull in previous work that has looked at the portfolio diet and then also |
| 1:49.8 | connect that to future questions as well, as well as some of the more broader work that Dr. |
| 1:54.7 | Glenn is involved with. So hopefully you find this useful and hopefully for those you who haven't |
| 2:00.6 | heard maybe some |
| 2:01.2 | previous discussions on this topic, it connects some dots back to those if you do want to go |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Danny Lennon, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Danny Lennon and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.