How true is it that a vegan diet is good for heart health?

True: Emerging data such as that found in the book the china study suggest that a vegan diet is very good preventing and possibly reversing heart disease. However, there are also data to suggest that eating fish is beneficial as well.

Very: Plant based diets have numerous positive effects on all aspects of health (not just heart but i'm biased :-) ). Check out the movie "forks over knives".

Not really: The long term effect of a low fat, vegan diet is malnutrition. Used for a short time (4-6 weeks) a low fat diet can be employed for weight loss. However, the long lerm effects of low fat diets are miserable. A low fat - high carb diet will lead to high Insulin levels, high triglcyerides, low hdl, metabolic syndrome and finally high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. www.edibolic.com.

I say "No": "The China Study" was based on death certificates from the era of Mao's famine, with millions of deaths and supposedly NO heart attacks. The guy was an ivory-tower type who was bamboozled and his promised scientific paper never appeared. The new studies show no benefit or risk from a vegetarian diet in longevity or any category of illness when we control for other factors. Fitness, not diet.