Journal of School of Public Health and

As adoptin and maintenance of healthy eating behaviours is an important factor for Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) prevention , this research was conducted to determin dietetic risk factors in relation to IHD. This is a case – control study conducted in fall 2003 in Tehran Heart Center and Tehran Shahid Rajaii hospital. 100 subjects with IHD, as cases and 100 controls with no cardiovascular disease in their medical history, participated in the study.Nutritional data was collected by Food Frequencey Quastionnaire. Some important risk factors including hypertention, hyperlipidemia,diabetes, Body Mass Index (BMI) and physical activity were evaluated. There was a positive association between IHD and consumption of fats and a negative association between IHD and consumption of fruits and vegetables.The most important factors were low intake of fish and high intake of fried foods that increased the risk of disease 13.96 and 54.65 times, respectively. Also 73% of patients had high risk diet while only 17% of controls had high risk diet. High risk diet increased the risk of cardiovascular diseases approximately 20 times. The main dietetic risk factors in this study were : low intake of fish, fruits and vegetables and lower consumption of oiles while hydrogenated fats with undesirable trans-fatty acid content, were the main source of dietary fat, in case group. Therefore community-based educational programmes are nesseary to promote healty nutrition.