Ultra-Processed Plant-Based Food Worse than Animal Protein in Heart Disease

I watched an interesting presentation from the 7th International Conference of Nutrition and Medicine that occurred July 26th-27th, 2019. Dr. Robert Oldfield, a cardiologist, spoke about plant-based nutrition and heart disease. I was so impressed by his presentation that I add it to the Resource Tab on my website. He compared cholesterol plaques to having splinters in your finger which provides a vivid image.

He also talked about the risk of coronary heart disease with various dietary strategies. He shared the results of a study that followed 4 833 042 person years. One person year is following one person for a complete year and observing what happens to them. This is a big study! It showed that a whole-food plant-based diet lowered the risk of heart disease. An animal based diet increased the risk. This two findings do not surprise me. However, the third group in this study had an ultra-processed plant-based diet. This group's risk of heart disease was higher than the animal based diet!

I have thought of ultra-processed plant-based diet to be better than an animal based diet. The concept of using these ultra-processed plant-based foods as a transition to a whole-food plant-based diet may not be a good strategy given these results! What do you think?