With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s only fitting to share some helpful tips on how to keep your heart healthy this month and throughout your lifetime. One of the key principles to a heart healthy diet is lowering your salt intake.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. When you eat too much salt in your diet, the extra water stored in your body can raise your blood pressure and put extra strain on your heart. Ninety percent of Americans are expected to develop high blood pressure over their lifetimes. So even if you don’t have high blood pressure now, it’s important to make preventative steps to avoid it in the future.
The salty 6, are the foods that most commonly add the most salt to the diet. These include: pizza, soup, cold cuts and cured meats, poultry, breads and rolls, and sandwiches. Other foods that typically have a lot of salt include frozen dinners, canned vegetables, instant or boxed meals, as well as processed and convenience foods. Read the nutrition label (low sodium is defined as 140mg or less per serving) and prepare foods from scratch at home to help limit your salt intake.
Bring flavor to your food without the excess salt. Try seasoning your food with natural herbs and spices, lemon, garlic, ginger, vinegar, and pepper (lemon pepper is not a good choice as it has a lot of salt), or try a salt free seasoning blend like Mrs.Dash or Lawry’s Salt Free 17.
This Valentine’s Day, give yourself and your loved ones the gift of a healthy heart. Keep an eye out for the next post that will feature the second key to a healthy heart.
Royally yours,
The Diet Duchess