To understand why certain foods are bad for your heart, you have to understand the nature of the ingredients in foods. It is your overall diet and daily eating habits that raise or lower your risk of developing heart disease. Lessening the regularity of your intake of key foods can reduce your risk of developing heart disease.
Saturated Fats
Regularly eating foods that are high in saturated fats can lead to high cholesterol levels, clogging up your arteries and veins. Foods like butter, margarine and ice cream are high in saturated fats. Meats that have not had the excess fat trimmed off them before cooking and foods such as fried chicken are especially bad for your heart because of the concentration of saturated fats in the excess fat and skin, along with the fats in the oil the food is fried in.
Trans Fats
Trans fats, or trans fatty acids, are produced by adding hydrogen to vegetable oils to make them solid at room temperature and below. You can find trans fats in many processed foods; just check the ingredient list on the packaging of products such as potato chips and cookies. They are referred to as hydrogenated vegetable oils. They are also used at fast-food restaurants to fry chicken, fries and donuts. Trans fats lower your good cholesterol levels and raise your bad cholesterol levels, which raises the risk of developing a heart disease.
Salt
About 40 percent of table salt is sodium chloride. Sodium increases blood pressure by retaining the excess fluid in your body, which can overwork your heart. Most sodium in the diet comes from processed foods. Check the labels on packaged products to find the amount of sodium per serving in them. The American Heart Association recommends consuming less than 1,500 mg of sodium a day.
Refined Carbohydrates
Although there are good carbohydrates that aid the body in producing energy, there are also bad ones. Carbohydrates found in brown rice and whole wheat are complex and take longer for the body to digest. The kind of carbohydrates found in white bread, white pastas and white rice are easily digestible and can end up being stored as fat in the body if eaten too frequently. This can contribute to causing diabetes as well as heart disease.
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