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Healthy Eating Guide

A healthy diet can be a big massive step towards reducing your risk of developing heart disease.

What is a Healthy Diet?

Prevention is better than cure and a healthy diet can not only reduce your chances of developing heart disease, but also protect your heart from further problems if you’ve already been diagnosed. It’s never too late to start eating healthily, and a good diet eating healthily can also protect against some cancers and diabetes.

Eating healthily can help you keep your weight, cholesterol and blood pressure under control and prevent blood clots and fatty deposits building up in your arterieshelp to protect you against coronary heart disease. Make sure you include plenty of fruit, vegetables and starchy foods, like wholegrain bread, pasta and rice, and reduce the amount of saturated fat, salt and sugar that you include in your diet. It’s easy to eat properly and healthy food is delicious.

5 simple ways to start a healthy diet

1. Fruit and vegetables

Eating at least five portions of fruit and veg a day – there’s good evidence that they help lower the risk of coronary heart disease. They can be fresh, frozen, dried or tinned and cooked or raw.

2. Fats

Eating too much fat, especially saturated fat, can have a bad effect on increase your cholesterol, which can increase your risk of coronary heart disease. Help your heart stay healthy by cutting back on the total amount of fat you eat and replace saturated fats with monounsaturated and polysunsaturated fats.

3. Oily fish

Eat at least two portions of fish a week, and make one portion an oily fish, such as mackerel, trout or salmon – making this small change to your diet could improve your chances of survival after a heart attack. .You can find a list of oily fish on the Food Standards website.

4. Salt

Reducing salt will help you maintain a lower blood pressure, which in turn may reduce your risk of coronary heart disease – time to bin the salt grinder and use herbs to season your food instead.

5. Alcohol

Too much alcohol can increase your blood pressure and may make you pile on the pounds and can also damage your heart muscle.

Healthy Heart recipes

Why not see if one of our recipe books suits you or try out some of BHF’s heart healthy recipes

Eating the right amount

The diet plate will help you eat the recommended amounts of the major food groups to help you control your portions.

More information about healthy eating

You can learn more about eating healthily on the BHF website.

Watch our Diet and Exercise videos

Getting active will also help you keep your heart healthy. Read our Get Active Guide to find out how to get the most out of your exercise.

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