Eating Smart for Your Heart
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You can reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack and cardiovascular disease.
Your best defense is leading a healthy lifestyle: don’t smoke, stay physically active, eat nutritious foods and maintain a healthy weight. May sound a little overwhelming, but here’s a few tips that break it down into manageable pieces.
Top 10 Nutrition Strategies to Help Your Heart:
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Eat more fruits and veggies. One way to ensure you are getting enough is to have some fruit for breakfast and snacks and have veggies for lunch and supper. Fill up your grocery cart with lots of different colours – fruit and veggie variety is important!
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Choose lean protein. Lean protein foods include fish/seafood, skinless poultry, less marbled beef and pork.
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Go for more whole grains & higher fibre foods. Fibre found in whole grain breads, bran cereals, beans/legumes, and fruits/veggies help to reduce cholesterol and keep us full longer.
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Get more omega-3 fats. These fats improve heart health by making the blood less sticky which reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. Omega-3 fats also lower blood pressure and cholesterol. The best sources of omega-3 fats are fatty fish and ground flax seeds, walnuts, and canola oil. Health Canada recommends eating at least two Canada’s Food Guide Servings of fish each week.
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Seek out healthy unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats found in olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocados and fish are healthy fats that are good for us. Be sure to include a moderate amount of these in your diet as they lower your “bad” or LDL-cholesterol.
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Torpedo trans fats. Trans fats (shortening, hydrogenated vegetable oils) are found in some margarines and are found in large amounts in packaged foods such as cookies, cakes, frozen meals, deep fried foods, and fast foods. The food label can help you determine how much trans fats are in a particular food. Aim to reduce or even eliminate trans fats from your diet since they not only increase the “bad” LDL-cholesterol but they also reduce the “good” HDL-cholesterol in our body.
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Trim saturated fats. Saturated fats increase the “bad” LDL-cholesterol in our body which negatively affects our heart health. To reduce your intake of saturated fats limit heavily marbled meats, remove the skin on poultry, and consume less butter, margarine and high-fat dairy foods.
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Reduce your salt (sodium) intake. Since high sodium consumption can increase your blood pressure, choose foods with little or no added salt and limit consumption of heavily processed packaged and fast foods since these tend to be the biggest source of sodium in our diets.
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Eat every 3-5 hours. Often having smaller meals and healthy snacks throughout the day helps to improve your food choices and helps you avoid overeating or making poor choices.
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Watch your portions! In addition to these 9 strategies if you’re struggling with your weight (many of us do!) it’s also important to consider how much you are eating. For some great tips click on the link and check out our article titled “Weight Loss Wisdom.”
The Heart and Stroke Foundation has excellent advice for eating healthy for your heart on their website www.heartandstroke.ca. There you’ll find a five step toolbox that leads you through both assessing your heart health and taking the steps to improve it.
Like to get started on some of the above strategies now? You’re at the right site!! The Heart and Stroke Foundation recommends that if you’re looking for lean protein, then go fishing! Most of Clover Leaf’s seafood products are a great source of lean protein, and many are high in the Omega-3’s essential to a healthy heart. Many of our tuna and salmon products come in handy pop top containers, some even mixed with light dressing – which makes them ideal for one of the daily snacks recommended. All of our seafood is low in saturated fats, water packed ones are even lower - making them ideal additions to a heart healthy diet. If lowering sodium intake is on your to-do list, you’ll be pleased to know that we also carry low sodium versions of our most popular seafood products.
Great taste, and a light heart to enjoy life with – you really can have it all.
Looking for More Information?
Heart and Stroke Foundation www.heartandstroke.ca
American Heart Association www.americanheart.org
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