Happy Heart Month Ravens! February marks the month dedicated to bringing awareness about heart disease and how we can reduce our risk.
It’s never too early to start paying attention to your heart health and developing healthy lifestyle habits, including quitting smoking, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol, and eating a heart-healthy diet. Read further to learn about heart-healthy eating!
Enjoy a variety of fruits and vegetables
Fruits and vegetables provide vitamins, minerals, fibre and antioxidants that help protect your heart. Aim to fill half your plate with fruits and veggies or try to center your meals and snacks around vegetables and experiment with new ways to use them.
Choose more high fibre foods
Fibre’s role in preventing heart disease is thought to stem from its ability to lower both blood pressure and cholesterol, and promote satiety. High fibre foods include fruits, vegetables, whole grains and pulses like baked beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas.
When adding more fiber to your diet, be sure to do so slowly and include enough water. Adding too much fiber too quickly can cause gas, bloating, constipation or diarrhea.
Choose unsaturated fats more
Did you know that we need fat in our diet? Our body can’t make essential fatty acids, meaning that we need them to stay healthy.
Choosing unsaturated fats can lower your chance of heart disease, particularly foods with higher amounts of monounsaturated and omega 3 polyunsaturated fat.
Monounsaturated fats are found in olive oil, canola oil and avocados, while fatty fish is praised for its omega-3 fatty acid. Omega-3 fats may help lower your risk of heart disease. Fatty fishes include salmon, sardines, mackerel and rainbow trout. If you don’t eat fish, alternative sources of omega-3s are green leafy veggies especially broccoli and cabbage, walnuts, flax seeds, and chia seeds.
Bottom Line
Habits you form early on can impact your heart health decades later. A heart-healthy eating pattern includes a balance of whole foods, with few highly processed foods.
Thursday, February 10, 2022 in General, News and Notes, Nutrition Blog
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