Women Whose Diets Best Matched the DASH Pattern Developed Diverticulitis Less Often

CATEGORY: GUT & DIGESTIVE HEALTH

For decades the standing advice to people with pouches in the colon was a list of foods to skip: nuts, seeds, popcorn. A 2025 study of nearly 30,000 U.S. women put a different question. Does the overall shape of a diet matter more than the banned list? Women whose eating most closely matched the DASH diet had roughly 23% lower risk of developing diverticulitis, the painful inflammation or infection of those pouches, than women whose eating matched it least.¹

Pouches Are Common, Flare-Ups Are Not

Small bulging pouches called diverticula form in the colon wall as people age. The colon is the main stretch of the large intestine. Simply having the pouches is called diverticulosis, and it usually causes nothing at all. Now and then one becomes inflamed or infected, and that is diverticulitis: abdominal pain, fever, nausea, and in serious cases hospital care.

415,000 Person-Years, 1,531 First Cases

Researchers drew on a large U.S. cohort of 29,916 women aged 35 to 74. None had diverticulitis, inflammatory bowel disease or cancer when they joined. Each filled out a detailed questionnaire on how often she ate various foods, and her answers were scored against several recognized healthy-eating patterns. Then years of waiting. Across more than 415,000 combined person-years of follow-up, 1,531 women developed diverticulitis for the first time.¹ No eating plan was issued to anyone. The women ate as they already ate, which is why the result describes a pattern rather than a cause.

One Score Out of Four Did Not Follow

The DASH pattern centers vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and nuts, with less red meat and fewer sugary foods. Closest fit to it went with about 23% lower risk. Two other healthy-eating scores pointed the same way, at roughly 19% to 22% lower. The fourth did not. Scores on the Alternative Mediterranean diet showed no clear link with lower risk, so the association failed to hold across every scoring system.¹ As for the old warning about fragments lodging in the pouches, eating peanuts, nuts and seeds carried no higher risk in this cohort, and neither did fruits with edible seeds.

In 46,295 Men, the Picture From the Other Side

Men have been examined on the same question. A cohort of 46,295 U.S. men followed for 26 years found that a prudent pattern rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains went with about 26% lower risk of diverticulitis, while the most Western-style diets, heavy in red meat and refined grains, went with about 55% higher risk.² That study observed habits too.

Key Takeaways

• Among nearly 30,000 women, diets that best matched the DASH pattern tracked with about 23% lower risk of diverticulitis. Two other healthy-eating scores ran 19% to 22% lower, and a fourth showed no clear link.
• Nuts, seeds and fruits with seeds were not associated with higher risk, contrary to decades of warnings. Diets were recorded rather than assigned, so these are associations.

References

1. Barlowe T, Anderson C, Nichols HB, Salvador AC, Sandler RS, Sandler DP, Peery AF. Diet and Risk for Incident Diverticulitis in Women: A Prospective Cohort Study. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2025;178(6):788–795. link
2. Strate LL, Keeley BR, Cao Y, et al. Western dietary pattern increases, and prudent dietary pattern decreases, risk of incident diverticulitis in a prospective cohort study. Gastroenterology. 2017;152(5):1023–1030. link.