Foods Your Heart Will Heart.

There's tons of information out there when it comes to what to eat and when. Is butter good? Saturated fat? Egg yolks? If you're still stuck on the egg-white omelettes, read on. 

When it comes to heart health and researched diets, the Mediterranean Diet is king, but its buddy, the DASH diet, is also a winner. Let's go over the best stuff to eat for keeping your heart happy!

The Mediterranean Diet  
Breakdown:

• Lots of fruits and veggies, olive oil, whole grains (WHOLE, not refined), beans, nuts, legumes. 
  
• Moderate amounts of fish and seafood.
  
• Little bit of poultry, eggs, and dairy.
  
• A wee bit of occasional red meat.
  
• Red wine with dinner. Not the whole bottle though, just one glass.

What it does:

• Significant reduction in your risk for cardiovascular disease and major cardiovascular events including stroke and heart attack. The studies vary here but up to around 40% seems to be estimated. 
• The better adherence to the diet, the lower the risk for cardiovascular disease. So don't keep sneaking meat in there and don't skip the veggies!
• Has the best ability to detect early changes in risk markers. This means your doctor will be SO impressed with your follow-up labs in a short amount of time. Yes! 

The DASH Diet
Breakdown:

• Similar to the Mediterranean Diet, this menu has you eating lots of fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, with a focus on low-fat dairy and really watching salt intake (limits vary from 1500 mg - 2300 mg each day). 
• Includes more meat, poultry, fish, and dairy.
• Limit sweets to 5/week max. 

What it does:

• One study found a 13% reduction on the Framingham Risk Score. This is what we use to determine where your cholesterol levels should be to prevent problems. 
• Significant reduction in blood pressure, total cholesterol, and LDL (the bad stuff). 

Busting the Myths:
Please, don't waste those egg yolks! 

• We know that dietary cholesterol has no effect on cardiovascular events. Egg yolks are also full of fat-soluble vitamins and also choline which helps to emulsify fat to break it up. Plus, yolks just make an omelette taste waaaaaay better.

Adding a pat of butter is fine. 

• So long as you're not adding an entire brick on your plate, butter is fine. The connection of saturated fat with heart disease is starting to look quite weak. Given the alternative that most people use (I personally think margarine shouldn't have ever been invented. Food, in general, should never be 'invented'), definitely opt for the butter. 

Cholesterol and sugar are connected. Strongly. Minimize your sugar.

• Fructose especially is under fire here. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in so many processed foods, pop, and a zillion other products has awful effects on obesity, blood sugar (which we know from last week raises your heart disease risk), blood pressure, and triglycerides. 
• Note: a lot of people started using agave a while ago as a 'healthy' alternative to sugar. The composition of agave is quite similar to that of HFCS and it's so highly processed. Skip it. 

So, now we cheers with our one glass of red wine to these amazing, risk-reducing, delicious-tasting menus! 

References:
Turati F, et al. Glycemic load and coronary heart disease in a Mediterranean population: The EPIC Greek cohort study. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2014 Dec 11

Sofi F, Macchi C, Abbate R, Genuine GF, Casini A. Mediterranean diet and health status: an updated meta-analysis and a proposal for a literature-based adherence score. Public Health Nutr. 2014 Dec;17(12):2769-82.

Alkerwi A, et al. Cross-comparison of diet quality indices for predicting chronic disease risk: findings from the Observation of Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Luxembourg (ORISCAV-LUX) study. Br J Nutr. 2014 Dec 5:1-11.

Martinez-Gonzalez MA, et al. Empirically-derived food patterns and the risk of total mortality and cardiovascular events in the PREDIMED study. Clin Nutr. 2014 Sep 16.

Siervo M, et al. Effects of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet on cardiovascular risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Nutr. 2014 Nov 28:1-15. 

Saneei P, Salehi-Abargouei A, Esmaillzadeh A, Azadbakht L. Influence of Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis on randomized controlled trials. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2014 Dec;24(12):1253-61.

Stradling C, Hamid M, Taheri S, Thomas GN. A review of dietary influences on cardiovascular health: part 2: dietary patterns. Cardiovasc Hematol Disord Drug Targets. 2014;14(1):50-63.

Kelishadi R, Mansourian M, Heidari-Beni M. Association of fructose consumption and components of metabolic syndrome in human studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutrition. 2014 May;30(5):503-10.

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