Last week, the United Nations urged people to switched to plant-based diet to save the planet from climate change.  If that doesn't work for you, there's always the growing body of research showing it's good for your heart.

A new study appearing in in the Journal of the American Heart Association followed 10,000 middle-aged adults in the US from from 1987 through 2016, and determined that eating more vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains while reducing animal products correlate with a much lower risk of dying of a heart attack or other serious cardiovascular event.  

"Eating a larger proportion of plant-based foods and a smaller proportion of animal-based foods may help reduce your risk of having a heart attack, stroke or other types of cardiovascular disease," said study lead researcher, Casey M. Rebholz, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US.

The subjects who ate the most plant-based foods overall had a 16 percent lower risk of having a cardiovascular event; a 32 percent lower risk of dying from a cardiovascular disease;  and a 25 percent lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those who ate the least amount of plant-based foods.

"Our findings underscore the importance of focusing on your diet," Professor Rebholz said.  "There might be some variability in terms of individual foods but to reduce cardiovascular disease risk people should eat more vegetables, nuts, whole grains, fruits, legumes and fewer animal-based foods."