Heart-healthy eating is not a diet; it's a way of life or a lifestyle choice. Planning meals, cutting calories and using healthy recipes go along with physical activity for a healthy weight and a healthy heart. Heart-healthy meal planning helps you make the most of lean meats, skinless poultry, fish, beans, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and minimal fats, sodium and cholesterol.
Interactive Menu Planner
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute sponsors an interactive menu planner to help you design a menu plan based on your daily caloric intake. The Interactive Menu Planner lets you choose your target calorie intake then build your menu plan around it. The planner provides a list of food options based on the exchange list established by the American Dietetic Association. Keep in mind that the values in this planner are based on the ADA exchange list values, which may differ from the Nutrition Facts label on the foods you buy.
Ethnic Heart-Healthy Recipes
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides two resources with menu ideas. The first one, "Heart-Healthy Home Cooking: African American Style," is a 44-page menu planner containing favorite African-American recipes, including heart-healthy salads, vegetables, side dishes, main dishes, desserts and recipe substitutions. The second resource is the, "Platillos Latinos: Sabrosos y Saludables! Delicious Heart Healthy Latino Recipes" booklet, written in English and Spanish. It includes appetizers, soups, entrees, side dishes, desserts, beverages and vegetarian recipes. All the recipes in these documents were analyzed by the Nutrition Data System for Research, 2005.
Heart-Smart Shopping
The American Heart Association offers a resource to show you how to shop for heart-healthy foods. Heart-smart shopping includes help with finding fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese, meat, poultry, bread, baked goods, oils and dressings that will support heart health. The site covers grocery shopping and how to read nutrition labels, what the heart-check mark means, and it provides an interactive grocery list building tool.
Books
If you are interested in finding a cookbook dedicated to heart health, try, "The Healthy Heart Cookbook: Over 700 Recipes for Every Day and Every Occasion," by Joseph Piscatella. Piscatella, president of the Institute for Fitness and Health, is a lecturer, writer and consultant specializing in health and lifestyle. Another heart-healthy cookbook is, "Betty Crocker Healthy Heart Cookbook," by Roger Blumenthal. This is a 256-page book has more than 140 heart-healthy recipes. This book was reviewed by The Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease.
References
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: Interactive Menu Planner
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Heart-Healthy Home Cooking: African American Style
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: Delicious Heart Healthy Latino Recipes
- American Heart Association: Heart-Smart Shopping
- Amazon: Healthy Heart Cookbook
- Amazon: The Healthy Heart Cookbook: Over 700 Recipes for Every Day and Every Occasion
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