Transcription:
It's Easy to Enjoy a Heart Healthy Diet!

Melanie Cole (Host): With heart disease being the number one killer of both men and women in the US, it might seem to be an inevitable fate for you and your loved-ones, but that’s not necessarily so. In fact, a balanced diet, something completely within your control, is one of the most important factors in fostering heart health. My guest today, is Ashley Larson. She’s a Registered Dietician with the Bryan Diabetes Center. Welcome to the show, Ashley. With a heart-healthy diet, I want to just start with the main things you want people to focus on. Let’s just start from the beginning, the most important bit of information.

Ashley Larson (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. Well, the best recommendation to help our heart is really to eat a well-balanced diet consisting of all of the food groups, having protein, carbs, fruit, vegetables, dairy -- picking a food from each food group. We want to always choose low fat, low sodium, and low cholesterol foods. This is the best way to really help our heart. We want to eat an overall healthy dietary pattern that will emphasize a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, skinless poultry and fish, nuts and legumes, and then healthy vegetable oils. We want to make sure to always limit the saturated fat and trans-fat as well as sodium, red meat, sweets, and sugar-sweetened beverages. If you choose to eat red meat, you just want to compare food labels and make sure that it’s the leanest cuts available. I always get a lot of comments that – well, I can’t eat red meat, I know it’s not recommended. Really, it is okay to eat red meat. The American Heart Association recommends three times a week. You just want to make sure you’re choosing the leanest cut available to you.

Melanie: You mentioned the word carbohydrates, and people are afraid of that word. They think carbs are bad, and all carbs are bad, but when you think of it, a carrot is a carbohydrate as is a tomato. How do we find that balance, and are all carbs created equal?

Ashley: Yeah, that’s a good question. I get that a lot, and really carbs, yes and no, they are created equal. Obviously, there are healthier carbs and not as healthy carbs. You can fit anything into your eating and lifestyle; it’s just that balance. But really, we want to – the main selection of our carbohydrates, we really want to choose from those healthier ones, which would include fruits and the starchy vegetables and then dairy products. Those all count as carbohydrates as well because they have that natural sugar in it. Those are the ones we want to choose for the most part.

Melanie: How important for a heart-healthy diet – we know that weight loss is one thing, but a heart-healthy diet is a different thing. How important is portion control? Is it important that we eat and practice portion control when we’re trying to do good for our heart?

Ashley: Absolutely. It all just comes down to that balance, of course. You want to choose healthier fats, like our avocados and almonds, olive oil, but still too much of them is not going to be good for you. You still want to focus on that balance of portion control, measuring out the fats using tablespoons, teaspoons, to make sure you’re staying within that recommended amount because otherwise, too much of it, even if it is good for you, can still be a bad thing.

Melanie: Again, weight loss being a different deal with the holidays coming up, what’s your best advice for a heart-healthy diet because it’s certainly not the time to try and lose weight at the holidays? But you can look to some of those foods and say, “Well, this is really packed with cholesterol or total, high fat, what do we do about that, Ashley?

Ashley: Well, what I recommend typically – again, looking back at that portion control, you can have a little bit but not too much of it because that’s where the fat and cholesterol is really going to add up. If you are in charge of the baking or cooking, try to use healthier ingredients. Even switching – maybe you always make mashed potatoes with whole milk, even trying to go to 1% milk to try to cut down on some of the calories and fats from that. Just trying to make healthier selections when you are at a family gathering or a holiday party or whatever, trying to focus on some protein to fill you up, and then sides – maybe the little bites or sides of the foods that might be a little higher in fat or calories.

Melanie: Ashley, what’s the DASH Diet because so many doctors are recommending it – what is it?

Ashley: Yeah, so, the DASH Diet stands for Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension, and it is very often used in heart disease. This diet is really pretty simple, so that’s why a lot of dieticians and doctors recommend it and use it because it’s – and everyone should actually really follow it if you have heart issues or not, even if you don’t have high blood pressure. It’s basically just to get focusing on that balance, so eating more fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy foods, cut back on foods that are high in saturated fats like our fried foods, French fries, baked goods a lot of times have that trans-fat and saturated fat and high in cholesterol. We want to eat more whole grains, fish, poultry, and nuts, so that’s really the main focus of the DASH Diet to try to help decrease that high blood pressure, so we focus a lot on decreasing sodium. The majority of our sodium intake is from processed foods, so trying to eat more home-made or natural, healthier foods is just better to cut down on that sodium.

Melanie: So Ashley, clear something up for the listeners because diabetics are at a greater risk for heart disease and they are supposed to steer clear of carbohydrates to a large degree -- and even some of the good ones we’ve talked about, because sugar can be an issue – in your opinion, if someone is trying to eat to prevent heart disease, do you find fats or sugars to be something that is more detrimental to our cholesterol plaques, we’ve got sugar for diabetics, what do you think?

Ashley: Yeah, honestly, you kind of have to watch for both of them, but for heart disease, we really do focus more on that fat because that's going to affect our heart a little more than sugar does. I mean, of course, sugar can affect other things, like you said, diabetes, and our blood sugars and insulin production and everything, but that fat is really going to be the biggest component to our heart. With fat intake, we want to try to limit our saturated fat and trans-fat. These types of fats are going to increase the risk of heart disease and really raise our bad cholesterol levels, so we want to focus more on the healthier fats, which are going to be the poly-unsaturated, monounsaturated fats. These type of fats can actually help lower our rates of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, lowers bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and then it can also provide essential fats that our body needs that we can’t produce ourselves.

Melanie: What are those kind of fats? Give us a little list of some of the good fats that you really do want people to eat because those kind of fats can actually help with heart disease.

Ashley: Yeah, so our nuts, and seeds, and almonds, are a good type of fat – olive oil, avocados, those are – fish is a good type of fat. Those are the best type of fats for our heart. We just still have to watch the amount we eat of them, because even a large amount is still going to add a lot of grams of fat and calories, but they are good for us, but they can be bad in really big amounts.

Melanie: So give us -- in summary, and besides your best advice, give us a little idea – if someone wanted to eat a heart-healthy diet, a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, go through the day for us and just give us what you would eat if you were really writing down and said, I want you to eat a really heart-healthy diet, just today. What would you tell them?

Ashley: Oh gosh. Okay, so, for breakfast some egg whites and some oatmeal or fruit would be a good type of breakfast to have that balance of protein and carb and get a healthy fruit in there. A snack, if you want a snack mid-morning or even carried over to the mid-afternoon that’s a lot of times when I encourage to get a dairy group or fruit group, so either a Greek yogurt if you want to get a little more protein. Always get the light to cut down on that sugar and fat.

For lunch, even just having some grilled chicken or turkey – a lot of people get sick of just salads and sandwiches, but you could make it into maybe a wrap with a whole wheat tortilla. Always make sure to include some type of vegetables, whether it’s raw vegetables with a little hummus or if you can put peppers and lettuce and tomatoes in your wrap or on your sandwich can always help. Then again for a snack having that Greek yogurt or cottage cheese is a good source for getting some protein and carbohydrate together. Or some almonds or nuts are that healthy fat again – a good way to get that in.

And then for dinner even maybe having four to five ounces of that lean ground beef or hamburger or having some fish with maybe some quinoa or brown rice and asparagus or green beans or a different type of veggie to end the day.

Melanie: That sounds like a really good heart healthy day, so wrap it up with your best advice about heart-healthy eating and why it’s so important to follow a diet like the DASH Diet or what you just described.

Ashley: Yeah, it’s just so important because what we eat is going to affect our health long-term, so trying every day just to make those lifestyle changes that are going to help you be healthier the rest of your life. A lot of times, when we think of diet, we think short-term, or it means restricting specific foods or food groups. We just have to remember that most foods can fit into our meal plan in moderation. I recommend – some of my advice is to do the 80/20 guidelines. If you eat healthy 80% of the time and that 20% kind of allows maybe some of those favorite foods, or the holiday foods, unhealthy foods, it’s still going to keep you on track and still give you the best you can do as far as eating healthy to control our heart and other diseases.

Melanie: Thank you so much. It’s really great information, Ashley. Thanks for being with us today. If you’re concerned about your heart health, take our free, quick, and confidential Heart Aware Online Screening at bryanhealth.org/heartaware, that’s bryanhealth.org/heartaware. This is Bryan Health Podcast. I’m Melanie Cole. Thanks so much, for listening.