Legumes, cruciferous veg tied to lower cardiometabolic risk

Clinical takeaway: For young adults building lifelong eating habits, an extra daily serve of legumes or cruciferous vegetables is a low-cost target that tracks with lower cardiometabolic risk, though the benefit may differ by sex.

Cardiometabolic risk factors are usually treated as a midlife concern, but they show up earlier than when most clinicians check. Nearly one in five young adults in a recent study already carried multiple markers of metabolic trouble. That new analysis suggests the vegetables on their plates tracked with that risk, but not in the way blanket standard advice might predict. The association turned on both the type of vegetable and the patient's sex.

Metabolic risk factors in young adulthood, elevated waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose, and lipids, predict chronic disease decades later, yet they rarely trigger intervention in a 22-year-old. Prior vegetable research has mostly studied older adults, and it tends to treat vegetables as one category. This analysis, drawn from the long-running Raine Study birth cohort in Western Australia, instead broke intake into five groups to examine which ones actually tracked with risk in the young.

After adjustment for income, activity, smoking, education, other vegetable intake, energy, and saturated fat, one added daily serving (75g) of legumes was tied to about 72% lower odds of cardiometabolic risk in men. In women, an added serve of cruciferous vegetables was tied to about 85% lower odds. The associations were group-specific: total vegetable intake showed no link in either sex, nor did allium or yellow-orange-red vegetables. Green leafy vegetables appeared protective in women in the unadjusted comparison but fell away once other factors were controlled. The signals were also strictly sex-specific: legumes carried no association in women, and cruciferous none in men.

Researchers analyzed 638 young adults from the Raine Study birth cohort, all assessed around age 22, using a food frequency questionnaire to sort vegetables into five groups. High risk meant two or more of five markers (waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose, triglycerides, HDL) above metabolic syndrome cutoffs, an intentionally lower threshold than diagnosis, since few participants met the full criteria.

Why the effect would divide so cleanly by sex remains unsettled. The vegetable groups carry different bioactive compounds, and the authors suspect those interact with sex hormones, which help regulate insulin sensitivity and blood vessel function. That mechanism is proposed but not measured here. Because the data capture a single point in time, they cannot show whether the vegetables lowered risk or healthier eaters simply had less risk.

"Our findings suggest that men and women may process some nutrients and plant compounds from vegetables differently. For example, natural compounds found in legumes may affect testosterone more strongly, while compounds found in cruciferous vegetables may have a greater effect on female hormones like estrogen and progesterone," said Theresa O'Sullivan, PhD, an associate professor at Edith Cowan University's Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute.

Source: McNamara N, et al. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2026 Mar 20. Higher legume and cruciferous vegetable intakes are associated with lower cardiometabolic risk in young adults: a cross-sectional study