American Heart Association Diet

The American Heart Association (AHA) has developed an eating plan to prevent heart attacks and strokes among the American population. Specifically, the plan does this by reducing three risk factors:

• Elevated blood cholesterol levels

• Elevated blood pressure

• Increased body weight

Recommendations of The American Heart Association Diet

Each of the AHA dietary guidelines promotes healthy living with proper eating and physical activity habits. The following is a brief list of the guidelines:

• Eat a variety of vegetables and fruits to include five servings per day.

• Eat a variety of grains to equal six servings per day.

• Eat fish at least two times each week, preferably fatty fish such as salmon and tuna.

• Choose reduced-fat dairy products, legumes, skinless poultry and lean meats.

• Select fats with no more than two grams of saturated fat per tablespoon such as liquid and tub margarine, canola, corn, safflower and olive oil.

• Balance the calories you eat each day with the calories you burn each day. To calculate, multiply your current weight by fifteen if you are moderately active. This is the number of calories used in one day. For sedentary persons, multiply weight by thirteen instead of fifteen.

• Be physically active for at least thirty minutes each day.

• Limit high calorie, low-nutritious foods like soft drinks and candy.

• Limit foods high in saturated fat, trans-fat and cholesterol.

• Maintain sodium intake at or below 2,400 mg or 1 ¼ teaspoons per day.

• Limit alcohol beverages to no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men.

Benefits

The advantages of following The American Heart Association Diet guidelines are many. First, since the primary goal is the prevention of heart attacks and strokes, any person, whether seeking to lose weight or maintain current weight, will improve their cardiac health. Secondly, the plan offers a positive approach to eating healthier. Giving up favorite foods is not mandatory. Eating a variety of foods in moderate portions and applying the guidelines to your overall eating regime over a long period of time is more important.

Besides lowering the risk factors for poor heart health, the plan can reduce your risk of acquiring other health conditions. Since a reduction in body weight is an outcome of the plan, a decreased risk of diabetes, cancer and osteoporosis can result. Similarly, many other conditions related to obesity can be improved upon or avoided by following the guidelines.

The AHA has also made it easy for you to look for heart-healthy food items on supermarket shelves. A red heart with a white check mark on it is the symbol to look for. This logo represents foods approved by the AHA for low saturated fats and cholesterol for healthy people over age two. Furthermore, the recommendations can be adapted to satisfy the nutrition requirements of the entire family, men, women and children. (Children under age two have special nutritional needs for fats to ensure proper brain development).

Implementation

Although the overall AHA plan is medically sound and completely safe, it does require specific planning, shopping and cooking. There are several recommendations within each of the guidelines above, all of which need to be implemented for positive results.

The first step is to obtain the AHA booklet at http://www.americanheart.org. The information within its pages describes the foods to eat from each food group, serving sizes for foods from each group, shopping tips and preparation and cooking recommendations. Detailed information regarding vitamins, minerals and other health benefits of certain foods is also given.

The AHA has several cookbooks and educational material available to assist people with The American Heart Association Diet plan. They also offer literature on healthy eating guidelines for children and teens with kid-tested recipes and simplified guidelines.