Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as personalized medical advice.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Food do we eat to live or do we live to eat today? We'll talk about food and heart health with Dr. Jamie cardiologist at Skagit Regional Health. Welcome to Be Well, the podcast from Skagit Regional Health. I'm Amanda Wilde. Dr. Menetrey, great to have you here. Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. So how much difference can your diet make in regards to your heart health?

Jammie Menetrey, DO: I think that the diet can make a huge difference, not only in preventing heart disease but also treating it and possibly even reversing it.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Wow. So, how does that work? What foods are we turning to best improve heart health?

Dr. Menetrey: Really it's a plant-based whole food diet, which means anything that has a face or came from something that had a face, you probably don't want to eat it. You want to eat more vegetables. You want to eat more fruits, whole grains and legumes, which are peas, beans and lentils.

Amanda Wilde (Host): So those are the foods we should turn toward. What foods should we try to avoid?

Dr. Menetrey: We really should try to avoid foods that are overly processed. Things that don't look like it was just picked off the tree or pulled out of the ground. Something that's highly refined, such as refined grains that have been milled to the point where we removed all the good fiber and the iron and the vitamins.

They've been puffed or flaked, or degermed. Those are the types of grains that we want to avoid. We want to avoid refined sugars, including sugar sweetened beverages. We really want to try to minimize salty foods. Things that come in cans, that are packaged in bags and boxes, generally those are preserved with salt. So we really want to try to minimize that. We want to eat the foods that are provided freshly from the earth, that have the least amount of processing to them.

Amanda Wilde (Host): And Dr. Menetrey, how do we do that? I mean, in a society where it's all about coffee, sugar, meat, spongy white bread and buns. How do we change what we're gravitating toward?

Dr. Menetrey: I think takes some thought for at least the first several weeks to really focus on what am I buying at the grocery store. If I stick to the fresh produce aisle for the vast majority of what I'm going to check out with, that's the right place to start. Then when you go home, say when you do have the time on the weekend, if you work a nine to five Monday through Friday, make those big meals on the weekends so that you have some leftovers, so you can have lunches and dinners throughout the week so that you know what you're eating came from your kitchen and you know, what you put into it.

You can choose to put in those, healthy foods, rather than stopping by the drive-through to grab a quick lunch because it's easy.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Or even if it's not fast food, my understanding is restaurants just put a lot of butter in things for the same meal you might make at home, a plant-based meal might be a lot more heart-healthy than the same thing at a restaurant.

Dr. Menetrey: Absolutely. Take a vegetable soup, for example, you can make a really hardy, healthy vegetable soup without any oil at home, and you can minimize the salt in the broth, or the tomatoes that you're adding to it and whatnot. Really improve its heart-healthy nature. Now you go out and buy that same minestrone, or what have you from your grocer or your local restaurant, and undoubtedly, you'll see the little pools of oil floating on there. And it's pretty salty, usually overly salty and maybe that helps it tastes a little bit better, but it's definitely not the healthier way to eat that soup.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Or may not be better but what we're used to, which is what we were just talking about and kind of changes the habits of our taste buds. What about portion size? What should we think about when we're looking at how much to eat?

Dr. Menetrey: I think that if you're focusing on a whole food plant-based diet, that's a little less of a concern. Because the plants themselves have so much fiber in them that we fill up much more quickly when we're eating plants, as opposed to sweets, oil, dairy and meat. So the caloric intake, actually is less, even though it feels like we're eating more food, the actual caloric intake is going to be lower.

So you really don't have to think about it too much in that way. The way I like to think about it is variety. The more variety that I can see on my plate of types of food, the more color I can see on my plate, the more nutrients I know that I'm going to be consuming.

Amanda Wilde (Host): But they should be colors that are found in nature. Right?

Dr. Menetrey: Correct. Shouldn't be bright turquoise, blue.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Right, but we're also busy. So, you know, we were talking earlier about fast food or even restaurant food, or something from the store versus what you make at home. And what you make at home can be so much more nutritious. But since we're all so busy, do you have some tips to suggest to help us choose heart-healthy meals when we're on the go?

Dr. Menetrey: I think if you can find a heart healthy alternative at a grocery store, if you've got to pick up something quick for lunch, you can find the little packets of carrots and hummus, rather than going through the drive-thru. My big thing is I try to plan ahead from home so I can always have that snack in my bag. So I don't even have to stop and try to figure out, okay, what's going to be the healthiest option at store X. Because I've already got it in my bag with me. So it takes a little bit of pre-planning, but I think it's doable.

Amanda Wilde (Host): But the pre-planning really saves you time because otherwise you're kind of wandering around the store, trying to see what healthy choices are available. So in a sense, it saves you time.

Dr. Menetrey: Exactly.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Well, this is really helpful information for eating with a healthy heart. Before we go, Dr. Menetrey, is there anything you'd like to add?

Dr. Menetrey: I think another big take home point of eating this way is it goes beyond just helping to improve our heart health. It has positive implications for so many other organs from our skin to our brain health, to our gut and our microbiome, and even potentially preventing cancer, treating diabetes, it goes so much beyond heart health. I just think it has so many positive side effects, that it makes it worth it.

Amanda Wilde (Host): Great suggestions. This is really helpful information for eating for a healthy heart. Dr. Menetrey, thank you so much for all this advice.

Dr. Menetrey: You're welcome. Thank you, Amanda.

Amanda Wilde (Host): For more information, go to SkagitRegionalHealth.org. And thanks for listening to Be Well, the podcast from Skagit Regional Health. If you found this conversation helpful, please be sure to tell a friend and subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your favorite podcast app. I'm Amanda Wilde. Stay well, and we'll talk again next time.