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When I was asked to write about heart healthy foods for the Good Health-a-thon I was thrilled. I mean, if there is something that my boyfriend and I can do good it's food. We love food! We love to cook! We eat healthy food! At least...I think I we do. I know lots of people who say that they eat healthy food but when I ask them what that means they all say something different. So I began to wonder - what the heck does "heart healthy eating" mean anyway?
Well according to the Mayo Clinic's 7 Steps to Prevent Heart Disease, Eat Right Ontario's Heart Healthy Food Choices, and Womenshealth.gov's Heart Health Eating FAQS heart healthy eating is pretty much what I expected. We should eat our fruits and vegetables, limit unhealthy fats, watch our cholesterol, consume low-fat protein, select whole grains, reduce our salt intake and practice portion control. You know, all those things that we're told to do all the time.
There's even whole campaigns dedicated to eating fruits and veggies alone. We've all familiar with 5 A Day campaign to the point where we know we're supposed to eat five fruits and vegetable portions a day. It seems simple enough but once you get into the nitty-gritty there are always questions, like the ones from The Pauper's Kitchen - is it five fruits and five veggies or is it five servings of either fruits OR veggies? And what counts as a serving? The Office Diet helps answer some of those questions and provides some ideas for how to meet your five a day goal.
Can we talk about sodium for a minute? Sodium is a sneaky little devil. According to the British Heart Foundation healthy eating should include limiting your sodium intake. In fact, there's a whole section on how salt is in everything. Ideally you don't want to consume more than a teaspoon of salt in a day and this Alberta Health Services shows how your daily choices can add up to a lot of salt in a day. We are chronic label checkers around here and Lee has often heard me harp on about how the amount of sodium in many things is horrific, especially when you consider that the numbers on the label are per serving, not per package. (Did you see this honey? I'm RIGHT. *ahem*)
Overall we do fairly well. We're big "everything in moderation" people, which is a good thing because there are certain things that you will just never convince me to give up - like butter. I don't care how much better for me that other spreadable stuff is supposed to be, I am not giving up my butter. Just you try to pry it from my hands. Actually don't do that. I don't fight fair and I'll absolutely kick you in the shins and run away with it. Ditto cheese (seriously, keep your hands off my triple cream brie). Other things I won't give up are pasta, potatoes, beer, oh let's just say carbs in just about any form and get it over with. But since we don't eat those things every day, or even every week, I don't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
That does not mean there's not room for improvement in our eating habits. We should be doing things like:
- Making our own stock. I make a lot of soups and when you make soup you need stock. Kalyn posted a great post on how and why you should make your own stock.
- Eating more veggies. We do pretty good with fruit but there are many a night where I look at my plate and think, "Rats. I forgot to make something green." With blogs like A Veggie Venture, Vegan Lunchbox, Albion Cooks and so many more at my fingertips there's really just no excuse.
- Choosing more whole grains. Sometimes we are really good at this, sometimes we are really not.
My philosophy is that it's all about balance. Some days I'll be very, very good and other days, days like today for example, are just better off not being mentioned. The best part about balance is that we don't kick ourselves (too hard) when we have a day that doesn't go great and we can pat ourselves on the back when we do. What do you need to work on? What can you pat yourself on the back about? Do you have any
