WELCOME to your guide to living a long, heart-healthy life through nutrition and other healthy lifestyle changes! We hope you find this information useful and informative. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask. Page 2 • Limit the total amount of fat in your diet. Avoid fried foods and limit fats, even healthier high fat foods such as margarine, vegetable oils and salad dressings. Heart Healthy Diet: Low Fat, Low. Cholesterol, Low Sodium Diet. Purpose of the diet. • Control and / or decrease levels of cholesterol in …

The most important thing to remember about a heart-healthy diet is that it really can taste very good! Many heart-healthy foods and dishes are delicious: marinated chicken breast with fresh-roasted garlic vegetables and whipped potatoes, homemade soups, tasty stir-fry, savory salads, and grilled salmon so tender you can cut it with a fork. These are just a few examples of foods that taste great and are very good for you! The next most important thing to remember about a heart-healthy diet is that you can still eat ALL of your favorite foods…. just not all of the time. Even if a certain food is not particularly good for you, but you think to yourself, “You know, I haven’t had (fill in the blank) in a really long time…I think I’ll have it” then it’s probably OK. We have a term for that. It’s called “IN MODERATION”. It means you can still enjoy your favorite foods, but from that list of favorite foods that are not-so-good-for-you, choose ONE only ONCE-IN-A-WHILE . Certain foods, such as prime rib for example, should be eaten very very rarely - no more than once or twice a year if that! You get the idea…. 2. Cholesterol Cholesterol is what clogs the blood vessels, so naturally you do not want to eat too much of it. Only animals and people have the ability to make cholesterol in their bodies, so only foods that come from animals have cholesterol in them. Fruits and vegetables will never, ever have any cholesterol - naturally! The American Heart Association recommends that you keep the cholesterol in your diet to just 300 mg each day. Remember that since your body makes cholesterol from all the saturated fat you eat, even if you try to avoid cholesterol in your diet but eat a lot of saturated fat, you are still at risk of developing heart disease. What about shellfish and eggs? For a long time experts have recommended that we stay away from shellfish and eggs because of their high cholesterol content. True, they do have a lot of cholesterol. But recently scientists have started to wonder if these foods also have some special quality in them that keeps them from being as dangerous as we once thought they were. Could something in those foods actually protect the heart even thought they are high in cholesterol? Maybe. We are not sure just yet. So, what is the moral of the story? Go ahead and eat eggs and shellfish, but eat them in moderation. (Hey, that sounds familiar….)

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