Dr Sarah Jarvis
Here to help
Heart attack and stroke between them are still the biggest killers in the UK. Diet has a huge influence on your risk of both.
Fortunately the same changes to your diet will cut your risk of both conditions, whether you’ve had a heart attack/stroke or not. Look
out for regular My Weekly recipes which prove healthy eating can be just as delicious and filling as unhealthy foods!
A major new study of the role of diet in our risk of heart disease and other conditions has just been published. They looked at both avoidable deaths and Disability Adjusted Li ife Years or DALYs – a measure m of health am mong people who are st till alive. Here are their c onclusions of the im mpact of food on our health h worldwide.
In third place – low i ntake of fruit accounts for f 2 million deaths and 65 6 million DALYs. Of course, veg is also important, and the more variety of fruit and veg you eat the better. Fresh, frozen and canned all count towards your 5 a day, and you’d be better off looking at 7 a day – 5 portions of veg and 2 of fruit.
Standard advice is to “eat a rainbow” – green leafy veg, tomatoes, oranges, red soft fruit and purple aubergines is an example.
Different coloured fruit and veg contain different vitamins and minerals.
In second place – low intake of whole grains is estimated to cause 2-4 million deaths and 82 million DALYs. Whole grain and wholemeal food is an important source of roughage – insoluble fibre which is good for your bowels. But it also helps keep your weight down, helping improve cholesterol and blood pressure and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. And ‘soluble fibre’, found in many fruits as well as in oats and veg, is particularly effective at controlling cholesterol and blood sugar.
The winner – excess salt in our diet – is thought, worldwide, to lead to between 1 and 5 million deaths and 70 million DALYs. The extraordinary thing here is the main effect of high salt intake is on just one risk factor – high blood pressure. On average as a country we eat about 8 grams of salt a day, 25% more than the recommended 6g (about 1tsp). The Department of Health has worked out that if we all cut our salt intake by just one gram a day, we could prevent well over 4,000 early
‘‘ PULSES AND LENTILS ARE A GREAT WAY TO BOOST YOUR PROTEIN AND FIBRE INTAKE SOUPS’’ – ADD THEM TO STEWS OR
deaths a year in the UK. In pounds, shillings and pence, this tiny change would save the NHS £288 million a year.
Three-quarters of the salt in our diet is from processed foods – often hidden in sauces, soups and pickles, as well as salty snacks, bacon and salami. Cooking from scratch allows you much more control over the ingredients – flavouring with herbs, spices and lemon juice instead of salt.
In the long term, a gradual reduction in levels of salt in your diet can help retrain your palate so you don’t miss it. But if you want the flavour of salt, consider a reduced sodium alternative such as LoSalt (I’m so impressed by their health pedigree that I work as their clinical champion).
The Portfolio diet, which can reduce cholesterol long term by 20%, follows many of
SWITCHING REFINED CARBS (SUGAR, WHITE FLOUR PRODUCTS) FOR UNREFINED (WHOLEMEAL AND WHOLEGRAIN) IS AN EASY WAY TO HELP YOUR HEART
these principles. As well as lots of fruit, veg and pulses, they recommend eating soya – tofu, soya drinks, yogurts and soya beans all count.
Another of their secret weapons is a daily dose of plant sterol or stanol – Flora ProActiv, Benecol etc. Another still is nuts (in their case almonds) which provide “good” oils to improve your cholesterol.
Finally, the Mediterranean diet is associated with long life for a reason. Fruit, veg, whole grain foods and unsaturated fats (olive or rape seed oil) all feature – along with low intake of saturated fats (from fatty meat and processed cakes, pastries etc), and regular oily fish. Importantly, refined sugar intake is also low in the Mediterranean diet. NEXT WEEK: Make The Most Of Your 9 Minutes