Eating a healthy diet, along with getting plenty of exercise and avoiding tobacco, is one of the most important steps you can take to avoid heart disease. Even if you already have the condition, consuming a heart-healthy diet can help slow its progress. The key is to pay attention to your diet and plan your meals carefully.
Foods to Eat
The American Heart Association recommends maximizing nutrients while limiting the number of calories you consume to the number you use, thus avoiding weight gain. Vegetables and fruits are high in vitamins, minerals and fiber and may, according to the association, help you keep your blood pressure down. Unrefined whole grains should also be high on your list, according to the American Heart Association, because they have fiber and can help you reduce blood cholesterol. And finally, the association recommends eating fish---particularly salmon, trout, herring or other oily types. Such varieties of fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids and may decrease your chances of dying from coronary artery disease.
Foods to Avoid
With some types of foods, you can end up overdoing it rather easily, notes Providence Health and Services of Portland, Ore. Cookies, chips, cakes, muffins, crackers and microwave popcorn tend to be high in saturated fats and trans fats, so they do not exactly make the "heart-healthy" list. French fries and other fried foods are also offenders due to their saturated fat levels, according to Providence Health and Services, as are fatty cuts of meat. Limiting foods and beverages that have added sugars is also a wise idea, according to the American Heart Association.
Guidelines
If you already have high cholesterol, the American Heart Association recommends limiting daily dietary cholesterol to no more than 200 mg. For people without such problems, the limit is 300 mg. A good target for sodium, meanwhile, is 1,500 milligrams or less per day. Fat should be 35 percent of your total calories each day or less, according to the association. You should keep saturated fat, in particular, to a minimum---no more than 7 percent of total calories per day.
Cooking
If you do much cooking, you know that certain recipes taste great but are loaded with fat, sugar and everything else that is bad for your heart. But you can typically alter the recipe a bit to make it much easier on the arteries. When baking, for example, you can use half of the butter, oil or shortening that is called for and substitute the other half with prune puree, mashed banana or unsweetened applesauce, according to the Mayo Clinic. You can reduce the amount of sugar by a third or a half and add in a bit of vanilla extract, cinnamon or other flavoring. In baked foods that do not require yeast, you can cut the salt down by half, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Expert Insight
Heart-healthy eating does not have to mean a lifetime of nothing but carrots and celery. "If you eat healthfully most of the time, it's fine to indulge occasionally," writes Valerie Edwards, outpatient nutrition therapist at Providence Nutrition Services, because "moderation and balance are the keys." But if you treat yourself more than once a week or so, she says, you should offset the indulgence with extra exercise. During the holidays, it is a particularly good idea to step up your level of physical activity.
