Healthy Heart Diet
Many of the key risks for cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes) are influenced by what you eat.
While risk factors like age, gender and ethnicity cannot be changed, simple changes to eating habits can combat raised blood pressure and high cholesterol levels that are instrumental in many cardiovascular episodes.
General Information
Nine out of 10 New Zealanders have blood cholesterol above recommended levels, while 3 out of 4 of us have raised blood pressure.
Consuming foods high in saturated fat is a major driver of high blood cholesterol. Too much salt in your diet can contribute to raised blood pressure. Consuming more calories than you burn off in your daily activity leads to weight gain.
So, what kind of diet is good for your heart? Generally, we should aim to:
- reduce "bad" fats (saturated and trans-fatty acids)
- reduce salt (sodium)
- "right-size" your calorie intake (adjust what, how much and how often you eat) to better manage your weight
Obesity puts you at increased risk of heart disease, mainly because it leads to a greater chance of developing diabetes and raises your blood pressure. Becoming overweight is also a common sign of a diet that contains too much fat and salt, and a lifestyle that includes insufficient exercise.
Know the enemy – good and bad fats
There are four main kinds of fat. All are high in calories, so will contribute to weight gain. However, not all are "bad" in terms of heart health.
Saturated fat and trans fats (or trans-fatty acids) are bad. These fats stimulate your liver to produce "bad" cholesterol (low density lipoprotein or LDL), which enters the blood stream and attaches to artery walls, leading to a narrowing and hardening of the arteries called atherosclerosis.
Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are much healthier types of fat. Replacing saturated and trans fats with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats – the good fats - has been consistently shown to lower levels of "bad" cholesterol in the bloodstream.
Hence, in order to reduce "bad" cholesterol in your blood stream, and enhance your cardiovascular health, it is very important to be able to distinguish between "good" fats and "bad" fats:
Saturated Fats ("Bad")
- Meat fat, whole milk, butter, cream, fatty cheeses, coconut and palm oils, cocoa butter.
Trans-fatty acids or Trans Fats ("Bad")
- Mainly found in hydrogenated vegetable fats typically used in snack foods like crackers, cookies, chips and pastries to create a longer shelf life; a small amount is found in processed vegetable oils used to make some spreads, but very little is found in New Zealand margarines.
Monounsaturated Fats ("Good")
- Olive oil, canola oil, avocados; most nuts and nut butters.
Polyunsaturated Fats ("Good")
- Soybean, sunflower, and safflower oils; oily fish such as sardines
Some simple ways to reduce "bad" fats
Reducing bad fats and increasing good fats can be as simple as substituting one food for another. For example, butter and margarine contain the same amount of fat (5g in every teaspoon) but butter consists mainly of saturated fat, while margarine is mostly polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat.
Here are some simple steps you can take to remove saturated fat from your diet:
- Reduce your butter intake and/or replace butter with margarine or olive oil-based spreads
- Replace full fat milk with reduced or low fat milk, or milk alternatives like soy-milk
- Replace full fat ice cream with low-fat varieties, or alternatives like frozen yoghurt or sorbets
- Trim the fat off your meat and remove the skin from chicken
- Replace butter, dripping or lard with non-saturated fat alternatives when roasting or pan frying food. Alternatively, grill your meat instead.
Fat is often contained in manufactured foods, so reading nutritional information relating to the foods we buy and eat is also important (see the Nutrition Information Panel section below).
A high salt intake is associated with raised blood pressure. Many of us are accustomed to adding salt to our meals for taste but salt also makes its way into our bodies via many processed foods, some of which you wouldn't necessarily suspect have salt in them.
Compare the information on nutrition information panels on the foods you buy to help identify manufactured/packaged food that it high in salt, and to select lower salt alternatives
Rather than adding salt to your own cooking, use herbs and spices to add flavour.
Nutrition Information Panels
The Nutrition Information Panel on most packaged foods we eat can be particularly useful in managing the fat and salt in our diets. That’s because they are required to state the quantity of the very things we are trying to reduce for heart-health. Nutrition Panels also state the calorie (energy/kilojoule) content of food, which is very important if weight management is one of your goals.
The Nutrition Information Panels always appear in the same format. The right-hand column features how much of these nutrients are included per 100g or 100mL, so you can easily compare different sized products.
The calories of the food item appear in the Energy column (kilojoules and calories are a measure of energy). The sodium row represents the salt content. Comparing these numbers on two alternative food options (for example, spread A and spread B) will help you select the lower saturated fat, lower calorie or lower salt option.
The Nutrition Panel makes it easy to understand the proportion of fat in the food. For example, a snack bar that has 30 grams of fat per 100 grams is made up of almost one third fat. If a product claims to be "98% fat free" you would expect to see 2 grams of fat per 100 grams in its Nutrition Panel.
Unfortunately, trans fatty acids are not always listed separately in the Nutrition Panel, but may appear in the ingredients section instead.
Another useful tool to use when shopping for food is the Heart Foundation Tick logo. Products with the Tick are a healthier variety of that food.
Eating for general health and wellbeing
Much of the discussion above is focused on helping to combat high blood cholesterol and raised blood pressure, in order to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Below is a selection of more general tips that will complement the heart-healthy food choices recommended above, and help your overall physical health and wellbeing:
- Enjoy three meals a day
- Eat fruit or vegetables at every meal and for snacks. They are high in fibre, contain no cholesterol and little fat
- Eat fish, chicken and red meat instead of processed meat products like sausages and salami
- Eat whole grains, whole grain breads, or high fibre breakfast cereals instead of white bread
- Use lemon juice or vinegar rather than oily dressings or mayonnaise
- Drink plenty of fluids each day, particularly water, instead of sugar-sweetened drinks and alcohol
- Avoid prepared food, snacks and meals unless you’ve checked the energy, fat and salt content
- Leave pies, pastries, biscuits, cakes and puddings for special occasions only – not everyday
- Choose low or reduced fat options where available e.g. milk, yoghurt, ice cream, cream cheese, sour cream
- Avoid fatty and salty takeaways because they tend to be high in all the wrong things (calories, fat and salt)
- Use mozzarella cheese instead of hard cheeses on pizza, pasta and salads.
- Use filo pastry rather than puff pastry as it is lower in fat
- Keep a food diary to become more aware of your food habits and note areas where changes are required.
Tips when cooking:
- Steam, microwave, poach, grill or bake food rather than fry or roast
- Use non-stick sprays on cookware rather than oil.
Further Information and Recipes
For assessment and treatment of high cholesterol and/or raised blood pressure levels see a doctor. For ideas about how to implement a healthy diet, a dietician or doctor can assist.
For more information on the internet, check out:
Last reviewed – 20/6/08