Heart Health and Nutrition

Heart healthy eating starts with making the right choices for meals and snacks.
If you prepare the meals in your household, your healthy choices will be good for the whole family.

Choose Fats Wisely

What About Cholesterol? The level of cholesterol in your blood shows if you are at risk for heart disease. Your body makes some cholesterol. Cholesterol is also absorbed into your blood from the foods you eat. Egg yolks, organ meat, and fatty animal foods are some foods that are high in cholesterol. Most high cholesterol foods are high in saturated fat. So eating less saturated fat will help lower your cholesterol.

Find Hidden Sodium Your body does need some sodium (salt), but too much can raise blood pressure. Be aware that sodium is "hidden" in many foods. These include canned soup and vegetables, packages pasta and rice dishes, condiments such as ketchup, and snack foods such as chips. Sodium is also hidden in most restaurant and fast foods.

Read Food Labels Reading food labels is the best way to keep track of what’s in the food you eat. Labels can help you see how much fat and sodium is in packaged food. With a little practice, getting the information you need from labels is easy. Keep serving size in mind. If you eat twice as much as one serving size, you must double all the other numbers on the label.