Best Foods To Eat For A Healthy Heart – Part 1

One of the best choices you can make for yourself is to choose foods known to be good for your heart’s health. To keep your heart pumping happily through your (long, I hope) life, you need to feed it well so it keeps delivering oxygen and nutrients throughout your body. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., ranking just ahead of cancer. High bad cholesterol is the first on the front of enemies endangering your heart. Let’s address it here.

As mentioned in my book, “How to Lower Your Cholesterol with French Gourmet Food”, there are plenty of foods available to either lower your bad cholesterol (LDL), or to increase your good cholesterol (HDL). If you eat them fresh and whole, raw or minimally cooked, they will be your allies against the war for your healthy heart. Use some of the recipes offered on this site and in my book to prepare tasty and healthy meals. Use certified organic or locally grown food as much as you can. Let’s fight the good fight… Attack!

Heart-Healthy Bran And Fiber

Oats

You knew that one was coming! Oatmeal is accepted by all sides of the nutritional debate as a potentially beneficial cereal. For one thing, it’s loaded with both kinds of fiber: soluble and insoluble.

Soluble fiber feeds your friendly bacteria, and insoluble acts as a colon scrubber. Oatmeal contains 55 percent soluble and 45 percent insoluble fiber – a good balance. One bowl of oatmeal eaten at breakfast every day can reduce your total cholesterol from 8 to 23 percent.

Please check out my recipe for a Healthy Homemade Breakfast Cereal.

Brown Rice

Brown rice is loaded with good heart nutrition. For one thing, it still has the bran on it, which is fiber. Since brown rice only has the outer hull removed, it still contains nutrients such as niacin (which is a vitamin known to reduce cholesterol), vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, selenium and vitamin E.

A cup of cooked brown rice provides 4 g of mostly insoluble fiber, known for protecting you from an assortment of cancers like colon, breast and prostate. But for us high-cholesterol folks, you’ll be glad to learn that its fiber and phytonutrients content help lower cholesterol levels and prevent cardiovascular diseases.

Here’s a good one: Chef Alain’s Tomato, Rice, and Beans Recipe.

Continue reading with Part 2 about “Beans And Legumes”…

Brown Rice

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