Look after your heart this Valentine’s Day!

Kick-start a healthier lifestyle and show your heart some love!

With coronary heart disease being a major cause of death, it’s so important to do what we can to look after our heart. There are many ways we can do this; quit smoking, maintain a healthy weight, drink less alcohol, do more exercise and eat healthily.

Check out these top nutritional tips for a healthy heart…

• Choose fibre rich foods such as wholegrain cereals, pulses (beans, peas & lentils), five portions of fruit and veg a day. If you need to increase fibre, do so gradually and include plenty of water.
• Reduce your intake of fat especially saturated fat which can increase cholesterol, including butter, fatty meats, crisp, biscuits and cakes. Choose unsaturated fats which can help lower cholesterol, including oily fish, unsalted nuts, vegetable oils and spreads.
• Eat fish twice a week, one of which should be oily like salmon, trout, sardines, mackerel or herring
• Reduce your intake of salt as too much can lead to high blood pressure causing heart disease. Adults should have less than 6g salt per day (a teaspoon). Most, if not all, of this is already in food, therefore use herbs and spices to flavour foods instead.

Another handy way to check if foods are high, medium or low in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt is to look at the front-of-pack nutrition labels shown on some foods.

For further information visit NHS website

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