Eating For Your Healthy Heart

There are many ways we can eat to support our heart health and all of them are simple variations on a common dietary theme. Here’s what we recommend.

What is a healthy diet?

A heart healthy lifestyle involves healthy eating, maintaining a healthy body weight, enjoying regular physical activity and not smoking.

There are many ways you can eat to support your heart health and all of them are simple variations on a common dietary theme. This includes: eating a dietary pattern based largely on minimally-processed foods with plenty of vegetables and fruit. Include some intact whole grains in place of refined grains: legumes, nuts, seeds, and other sources of healthy fats such as oily fish. You can also include non-processed lean meats or poultry and/or dairy.

By following a heart-healthy way of eating and in the right amounts, then you will be ensuring that you get all the nutrients you need to support your health.

The Healthy Heart visual food guide is based on a cardio-protective eating pattern, so it focuses on looking after your heart and overall health. It’s a simple tool for you to use that shows:

• The balance and proportions of heart-healthy foods to eat
• Foods that can be substituted for each other within food groups, and
• The types of food to eat for good heart health.

Source: www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/healthy-eating/eating-for-a-healthy-heart