eat heart healthy
Eat Grapes to Protect Your Heart
You've been told to cut back on your sodium to reduce your blood pressure. How about potassium? Increasing the amount of potassium you consume speeds up your body’s ability to flush sodium out. In addition to bananas, try other potassium rich foods, such as baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, orange juice, winter squash, tomato puree, lima beans, cantelope, and yogurt.
Flush Out Sodium with Potassium-rich Bananas
You've been told to cut back on your sodium to reduce your blood pressure. How about potassium? Increasing the amount of potassium you consume speeds up your body’s ability to flush sodium out. In addition to bananas, try other potassium rich foods, such as baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, orange juice, winter squash, tomato puree, lima beans, cantelope, and yogurt.
Experiment with Quinoa
Considered a complete protein because it provides all nine essential amino acids, quinoa is a heart healthy side dish. Serve this widely available grain warm or cold, in place of rice or pasta. Each serving of quinoa offers 5 grams of fiber, plus zinc, iron, vitamin E, and selenium. No wonder the United Nations anointed it a “Super Crop.”
Re-Train Your Taste Buds
Think you'll never be able to trade your whole milk for skim? Take heart. A study published in Appetite found that women who ate fewer high-fat foods over a six-month period began to prefer lower fat foods naturally. So go ahead and switch from full-fat to low-fat alternatives knowing that your taste buds will, indeed, adjust with time.
Rethink Your Pizza Order
Make your pizza healthier by ordering it with extra heart healthy veggies like mushrooms, peppers and olives; hold the pepperoni and sausage; half the cheese and double the sauce. Some national chains, like Papa John’s, even offer whole-wheat crusts. If that’s not an option at your favorite local pizza place, stick with the thin crust variety, which has fewer calories.
Eat Brazil Nuts for a Healthier Heart
One serving of Brazil nuts offers a whopping 780 percent of your daily selenium needs. The mineral was found to reduce the risk of peripheral artery disease (PAD), which has been linked to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), in a study at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Those with the highest selenium levels in their blood were 33 percent less likely to have PAD.
Eat With Your Stomach, Not With Your Eyes
It’s true: Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. Swedish researchers found that when 18 obese subjects were blindfolded, they ate 24 percent less than they did without the blindfold. Moreover, they reported feeling just as satisfied. Learn to pay attention to your body’s fullness cues and ignore the amount of food left on your plate.
Choose Grass-Fed Beef
Grass-fed beef is the heart healthier choice when compared with traditional grain-fed cattle. It is lower in saturated fat and higher in heart healthy omega-3s and vitamins A and E. Grass-fed beef is carried at organic markets and higher-end grocery stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s; look for products containing the USDA certified grass-fed label.
Use Cheese as a Condiment
Most heart-healthy diets recommend limiting your intake of full fat cheese, like cheddar, Swiss and blue, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut it out of your diet entirely. Instead, treat it as a condiment and shred or crumble small amounts to top salads, soups and pasta dishes. You’ll enjoy it more when it’s not mixed in or buried between layers of bread.
Hawthorn Supplements May be Good for Your Heart
Hawthorn berries are an ancient treatment for heart disease -- people have reportedly been using them since the first century. This powerful antioxidant may help improve coronary artery blood flow and function, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and prevent atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Ask your doctor if a taking Hawthorn supplement might be smart for your heart.
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