What qualifies as “healthy eating“? Doctors say it is a combination of cutting your fat intake and filling up on fruits and vegetables, and fiber-rich grains and beans.
Lets take a closer look at each of these heart-healthy nutrition strategies:
Skimp on fat
Most doctors recommend that you limit your fat intake to about 25% of calories – much less than the 34% of calories that the average American consumes. And most of that fat should be unsaturated, suggests Alica Lichtenstein, D.Sc., associate professor and research scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. The reason is that both monounsaturated fat (found in olive oil and canola oils and most nuts) and polysaturated fat (found in corn, safflower, and sunflower oils) actually support heart health by reducing LDL cholesterol while leaving HDL cholesterol unchanged. That’s important because your body needs HDL to flush out LDL.
On the other hand, saturated fat, found mainly in animal foods, increases heart disease risk. The link between the two is so strong that the American Heart Association recommends getting no more (and preferably less) than 10% of calories from saturated fat.
Feast on Fiber
Fiber – especially the soluble kind found in grains, beans, and fruits – binds with cholesterol in the body and helps remove it along with the waste, explains Diane Grabowski-Nepa, R.D., nutritional counselor at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Malibu, California. Researchers cannot yet explain how fiber works its cholesterol-clobbering magic. One popular theory is that it binds with bile-acids in the intestines and escorts these cholesterol-laden compounds from your body. Your body then has to recruit more cholesterol to make more bile acids, reducing your blood cholesterol level in the progress.
How much fiber does it take to safeguard your health? Between 20 and 30 grams a day, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Add some antioxidants
Vitamin C and E and beta-carotene are antioxidants. As their name suggests, the antioxidants protect against oxidation, a naturally occurring process in which renegade oxygen molecules called free radicals damage healthy cells and contribute to the artery-clogging process.
Just how protective are these nutrients? When researchers at Harvard University compared the diets of more than 87,000 nurses, they found that the nurses who ate more antioxidant-rich foods were 46% less likely to develop heart disease than the nurses who ate the least.
At the very least, experts say, you should make sure that you are getting the Daily Values (DVs) of vitamins C and E – 60 milligrams and 30 international units (IU) respectively. No DV has been established for betacarotene – but you need a daily intake of about 5,000 IU to match the DV of vitamin A. (Your body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A).
Lets take a closer look at each of these heart-healthy nutrition strategies:
Skimp on fat
Most doctors recommend that you limit your fat intake to about 25% of calories – much less than the 34% of calories that the average American consumes. And most of that fat should be unsaturated, suggests Alica Lichtenstein, D.Sc., associate professor and research scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. The reason is that both monounsaturated fat (found in olive oil and canola oils and most nuts) and polysaturated fat (found in corn, safflower, and sunflower oils) actually support heart health by reducing LDL cholesterol while leaving HDL cholesterol unchanged. That’s important because your body needs HDL to flush out LDL.
On the other hand, saturated fat, found mainly in animal foods, increases heart disease risk. The link between the two is so strong that the American Heart Association recommends getting no more (and preferably less) than 10% of calories from saturated fat.
Feast on Fiber
Fiber – especially the soluble kind found in grains, beans, and fruits – binds with cholesterol in the body and helps remove it along with the waste, explains Diane Grabowski-Nepa, R.D., nutritional counselor at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Malibu, California. Researchers cannot yet explain how fiber works its cholesterol-clobbering magic. One popular theory is that it binds with bile-acids in the intestines and escorts these cholesterol-laden compounds from your body. Your body then has to recruit more cholesterol to make more bile acids, reducing your blood cholesterol level in the progress.
How much fiber does it take to safeguard your health? Between 20 and 30 grams a day, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Add some antioxidants
Vitamin C and E and beta-carotene are antioxidants. As their name suggests, the antioxidants protect against oxidation, a naturally occurring process in which renegade oxygen molecules called free radicals damage healthy cells and contribute to the artery-clogging process.
Just how protective are these nutrients? When researchers at Harvard University compared the diets of more than 87,000 nurses, they found that the nurses who ate more antioxidant-rich foods were 46% less likely to develop heart disease than the nurses who ate the least.
At the very least, experts say, you should make sure that you are getting the Daily Values (DVs) of vitamins C and E – 60 milligrams and 30 international units (IU) respectively. No DV has been established for betacarotene – but you need a daily intake of about 5,000 IU to match the DV of vitamin A. (Your body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A).
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