Healthful and Unhealthful Plant-Based Diets and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in U.S. Adults: Prospective Study

Background: Despite the potential protective effect of a plant-based diet against chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), it remains unknown whether intake of different types of plant foods is beneficial for COPD. Our aims were to determine whether adherence to the healthful version of a plant-based diet (healthful Plant-based Diet Index (hPDI)) is associated with a lower COPD risk, whereas adherence to the unhealthful version (unhealthful Plant-based Diet Index (uPDI)) is associated with a higher COPD risk.

Methods: 46,948 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, 73,592 women from the Nurses' Health Study, and 85,515 women from the Nurses' Health Study II who completed biennial questionnaires from 1984-2018. We derived diet scores from repeated validated food frequency questionnaires. Among 5,661,994 person-years of follow-up, we documented 2605 validated COPD cases between 1984-2018.

Results: After tight control for smoking and other potential confounders, COPD risk was 46% lower among participants with the highest hPDI score compared to those with the lowest score. Conversely, COPD risk was 39% higher among participants with the highest uPDI. Further adjustment for processed meat intake led to similar results.

Conclusions: These findings provide further evidence for consuming a diet that emphasizes healthful plant foods to optimize lung health.