Healthy Diet

What is a Healthy Diet?

 A healthy diet can help to reduce the risk of developing heart disease. If you already have coronary heart disease, eating a well balanced diet can also help protect your heart from further problems.

Eating healthily can help protect your heart in the following ways:

help maintain a healthy weight

help lower your blood cholesterol level

help keep your blood pressure down

help prevent atheroma (fatty material) from building up inside your arteries

help prevent blood clots forming.

Eating a well balanced diet can help you improve your general health and can help protect against other conditions such as some cancers and diabetes.

A healthy diet contains plenty of fruit and vegetables and starchy foods such as wholegrain bread, pasta and rice; and is low in fat (especially saturated fat), salt and sugar.

In general men need about 2,500 kcals (calories) each day and women need about 2,000 kcals. However, what you need will be different from someone else.

 

 

What is a Healthy Diet?

A healthy diet can help to reduce the risk of developing heart disease. If you already have coronary heart disease, eating a well balanced diet can also help protect your heart from further problems.

Eating healthily can help protect your heart in the following ways:

help maintain a healthy weight

help lower your blood cholesterol level

help keep your blood pressure down

help prevent atheroma (fatty material) from building up inside your arteries

help prevent blood clots forming.

Eating a well balanced diet can help you improve your general health and can help protect against other conditions such as some cancers and diabetes.

A healthy diet contains plenty of fruit and vegetables and starchy foods such as wholegrain bread, pasta and rice; and is low in fat (especially saturated fat), salt and sugar.

 Fruit and vegetables

There is good evidence that eating a diet that is rich in a variety of fruits and vegetables can help to lower the risk of coronary heart disease. Aim to eat at least 5 portions each day. They can be fresh, frozen, dried or tinned. 

Fats

Too much fat in your diet particularly saturated fat, can increase your blood cholesterol levels which can increase your risk of developing coronary heart disease.   To help reduce your cholesterol level you should cut down on the total amount of fat you eat and replace saturated fats with monounsaturates and polyunsaturates and cut down on foods containing trans fats.

Oily fish

Eating oily fish regularly can help to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and may help improve the chances of survival after a heart attack.  Aim to eat at least two portions of fish a week one of which should be oily.

 Salt

Reducing the amount of salt you eat will help keep your blood pressure down and may reduce your risk of coronary heart disease.

 Alcohol

Too much alcohol can damage the heart muscle, increase blood pressure and may also lead to weight gain.

What to look for when you go shopping

If you have coronary heart disease, watching what you eat is very important.

When you look at a food label, you should look at:

Even if you don’t have coronary heart disease, eating foods which are low in fat, saturated fat and salt can help reduce your risk of developing coronary heart disease in the future.

The daily guideline amounts for the most important nutrients listed on food labels are:

In general,men need about 2,500 kcals (calories) each day and women need about 2,000 kcals. However, what you need will be different from someone else. For example, someone who is very active will need more calories than someone who is not. Someone who is trying to lose weight probably needs only 1,500k calories or 1,800k calories a day. This is the same for the other nutrients listed in the table.