It is no surprise that large amounts of fried foods could lead to a higher risk of heart disease. But scientists have now officially linked the entire Southern US diet to an increased risk of heart attack and death.

“If their overall pattern of eating seems to closely match those components, they may want to move away from that,” said lead researcher James Shikany, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, according to Reuters.

Heart attacks and heart disease are the leading cause of both men and women in the US according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of the 735,000 people that suffer from a heart attack each year, the American Heart Association reports that about 120,000 of them die as a result.

The CDC recommend that people exercise regularly and maintain a healthy weight and diet. They also added in to the equation the importance of not smoking.

Instead of pinpointing certain foods or parts of diets that could be tied to heart disease, experts are not looking at the bigger picture “at overall diet as opposed to a specific nutrient or specific food,” Shikany said.

In the new study, interviews were conducted on people over 45 from all over the US on the types of food they had eaten over the past year. With this data, researchers were able to identify five dietary patterns.

One type of diet had a lot of convenience foods in it that matched up to foods people would most likely order from a restaurant or fast food.

A second pattern covered a lot of plant-based foods like veggies, fruits, beans, fish, poultry and yogurt.

The third was a diet consisting of a lot of “sweets” like foods with added sugars, desserts, candy and sweetened breakfast foods.

Fourth was a unique diet pattern they discovered that they called “alcohol and salad.” It consisted mainly of a liquid diet of wine and liquor accompanied by heavy leafy greens and other salad components with added fats.

Finally, they identified a diet that was called the “Southern” pattern. This diet was made up of fried foods, eggs, organ meats, processed meats, sugary drinks and foods with added fats.

Follow up with the 17k people included 536 heart attacks over about six years, some resulting in death. The people falling into the Southern pattern were found to be 37 percent more likely to have a heart attack during those years while the other four dietary patterns did not lead to heart disease or heart attacks.