EXECUTIVE HEALTH - March 2006
by Shannon Leonard-Boone


Does Your Heart Like Your Diet?
Exercise and fancy food labels alone are not enough

Sure, you’re physically active, getting in those 10,000 steps a day and taking the stairs. But when it comes to combating high blood pressure and obesity, checking your fiber and whole grain intake may be just as important as monitoring your heart rate.

There are simple, everyday ways to make your diet heart-healthy – even if you’re a busy professional – though the vagaries of marketing-driven food labeling don’t always make it easy.

Bulking up with fiber
Dr. Karen Mason, assistant professor with the nutrition and dietetics program at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green and membership chair of the Kentucky Dietetic Association, recommends a fiber-rich diet for lowering cholesterol.

Diet experts categorize fiber as soluble or insoluble, based on the way it reacts in water. The body’s reaction differs for each type. Soluble fiber is found in oatmeal and oat bran cereal, and black, kidney and pinto beans. Fruit and vegetables contain both insoluble and soluble fiber, Mason says.

Whole grains provide more insoluble fiber, vitamins and minerals than processed grains, Mason says. Three servings per day are recommended, for a total of 25 grams per day for women and 38 grams for men. Many food companies now offer healthier whole-grain or whole-wheat varieties of pasta, tortillas, waffles, cereals and other products, she says. But beware – deciphering nutritional content can be tricky.

If you’re buying crackers, for instance, the packaging may say ‘Made with whole grains,’ or ‘…with whole wheat,’ Mason says, but often the first ingredient listed is enriched white flour, with the whole grains used in lesser amounts farther down.

“That can be a little deceiving,” Mason says. In fact, in February the federal government issued an official definition of whole-grain food – it must not be highly refined – to help consumers sort through the products that claim to contain whole grains.

Soy anything you like?
Since 1999, the federal Food and Drug Administration has allowed food manufacturers to tout products containing soy protein as helping reduce the risk of heart disease. Though more recent studies aren’t as clear about the extent of soy protein’s effects, Mason says, soy protein is high in healthy polyunsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals and is low in saturated fats.

Mason says soy-based yogurt and cheese are good choices, and she personally enjoys soy milk, a nondairy alternative to milk, as a healthy beverage.

Cathy Lerza, executive director of the Central Kentucky office of the American Heart Association in Lexington says there are ways to take the guesswork out of grocery shopping.

“To make it easy to find healthy items at the grocery, look for items with the heart check,” she says, referring to the association’s “heart check mark” logo reserved for foods low in saturated fats and cholesterol.

Once your pantry brims with wholesome options, Lerza says it helps to pack your own lunch instead of eating at a restaurant.

“It’s so much easier to control your nutritional content,” she says.

Serving a purpose
Have you ever been blithely downing a snack-sized bag of chips, 20-ounce bottled beverage or other prepackaged food, only to glance at the nutrition information and realize you’d just consumed two or more servings? You’re not alone, says Dr. Bill Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity in the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“One of the things that’s confusing on the label is calories per serving,” Dietz says.

The FDA is encouraging food companies to list both calories per serving and per package to draw a more obvious distinction, Dietz says.

Overall, having a diet rich in fruit and vegetables and whole grains is best, he says. They include important nutrients like potassium and vitamin C and displace other high-calorie foods that add unwanted pounds. If you’re dining out, begin with a soup or salad so you’ll eat less of any high-calorie entrees, he says.

Cholesterol-raising trans fats make baked goods crisper, but also contribute to heart disease, Dietz says. The FDA has mandated that food manufacturers list trans fat content on packaging, so limit those along with saturated fats, often found in meat and dairy products.

Do as they say and do
So, do these busy health experts take their own advice?

Dietz says he usually packs a sandwich and two large pieces of fruit like apples and pears for lunch. Lerza says she also packs a healthy lunch and incorporates exercise into TV-watching time by walking 30 minutes on a treadmill and using commercial breaks for toning exercises. Mason says she’s particularly fond of soy-based hot dogs and corn dogs, and recently sampled some whole-wheat cookies.

“They were a little bit drier than the equivalent not made with whole grain, but they were still good,” she says.

She says some people think adopting a heart-healthy diet means they have to forego their favorite foods entirely.

“That’s not true,” she says. “You can have your cake, but you just can’t eat it every day.”

Shannon Leonard-Boone is a staff writer for The Lane Report
editorial@lanereport.com

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