Eating a well-balanced diet that emphasizes particular foods can help protect your heart's health. Your weight, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and insulin levels can all be impacted by the food you eat. Specific guidelines help you plan heart-healthy menus. Next time you head to the grocery store, have a list full of heart-healthy foods to help you create a week's worth of meals.
Fruits and Vegetables
The American Heart Association recommends consuming a minimum of 4 1/2 cups of fruits and vegetables daily. Fruits and vegetables contain fiber, which may help lower cholesterol, along with antioxidants and other compounds that may fight free radicals and support heart health. While 4 1/2 cups may seem like a lot to fit in one day's worth of meals, with proper planning you can easily fit them in. Have an 8-oz. glass of orange juice at breakfast, include a salad with 2 cups of leafy greens and 1/2 cup chopped vegetables at lunch, snack on a piece of whole fruit mid-afternoon and have 1 cup of steamed or roasted vegetables with dinner. Other ways to plan to get your fruits and vegetables are to whip up a fruit smoothie, snack on 1/4 cup dried fruit, add fresh fruit to yogurt, add extra vegetables to casseroles, top sandwiches with spinach and tomato or have baby carrots with hummus as a snack.
Protein
Meats are one of the main sources of saturated fat in your diet. Strive to limit saturated fat to less than 7 percent of your total daily calories to help control cholesterol and your weight. Planning meals around moderate servings of proteins, such as white-meat poultry, beans, tofu and fish, can help you limit saturated fat. Each week, plan at least two meals that involve a 3.5 oz. serving of fish, preferably salmon, tuna or another fatty type or fish. When devising menu plans for heart health, limit processed meats to two servings or fewer per week. This means having lean ground turkey at breakfast instead of processed sausage, fresh chicken breast on a sandwich instead of ham and planning for grilled extra lean sirloin instead of hot dogs at dinner.
Other Foods
Plan to eat at least three servings of whole grains daily to protect heart health. Look for those that are high in soluble fiber, which has particularly positive effects on cholesterol levels. Plan for oatmeal at breakfast or to have oat-based, whole-grain bread at lunch. Try barley instead of rice as a side dish. You should also plan for at least four servings of nuts, beans and seeds weekly. Fitting these servings into your plan is simple: perhaps on Monday you plan to have peanut butter on oat-bran bread for breakfast; Tuesday you have lentil soup at lunch; Thursday you have a handful of almonds at lunch; and on Saturday you make a stir fry topped with sesame seeds.
Additional Considerations
When planning your menu, strive to keep sodium intake to less than 1,500 mg per day. Limiting your intake of processed foods, including bread, canned soups, frozen dinners and restaurant meals, can help you manage sodium. Plan to limit your intake of added sugar as well. This includes sugars in sweetened beverages, fruit-flavored yogurt, ketchup, cereals and sweets. The American Heart Association recommends sticking to 6 tsp. of sugar per day as a woman and 9 tsp. per day as a man. If you stick to whole, unprocessed foods, you can avoid most added sugars.
