Shopping for our hearts
Since a friend of mine recently had a serious heart attack, I’ve been thinking about a need to change our busy lifestyles, exercise regimes and diets. Making healthy food choices is important for feeling energetic and maintaining overall healthy well-being. New Year’s is the time of year when we are often thinking of resolutions to do just these things.
While doing my Christmas shopping, I came across a book, The HeartSmart Shopper – Nutrition on the Run, (Copyright 1997) by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and Ramona Josephson. She is a registered dietitian, has a busy counselling practice, runs health promotion programs and is in demand as a lecturer and media guest. She bases this book on Health Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Her book is full of tools, including the Health Check program to assist shoppers in making healthy food choices in the grocery store. Every choice you make, every old habit you break, can make a big difference to your family’s health in the long run.
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The Heart and Stroke Foundation is launching the Health Check program to change the way Canadians choose food products for a healthy diet. Under the Health Check program food producers offer their products/formulas voluntarily to the foundation for nutritional analysis. If a product meets the program’s standards, the producer may display a Health Check logo on the package, in conjunction with nutrition information and a helpful message for consumers. Watch for the Health Check program in the months ahead and visit the internet website at www.healthcheck.org.
Josephson has developed an easy way to remember heart health risk factors by using the acronym B.R.E.A.D. With this daily slice of B.R.E.A.D., it’s not too hard to keep these risk factors in mind:
- B is for blood pressure and blood cholesterol. Know your numbers.
- R is for relaxation. Breathe deeply, relax, stop and smell the roses.
- E is for eating well with less fat and more fibre.
- A is for active living since activity reduces blood pressure and decreases heart disease risk.
- D is for don’t smoke. A pack-a-day smoker has twice the risk for heart disease.
Josephson uses symbols to make it simple to use her book as a tool in shopping. The foods we eat contain over 50 different nutrients. According to Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating, the key to good nutrition is to balance a variety of foods from each group and consume them in appropriate quantities.
The shopping cart
She suggests we use a Heartsmart shopping cart that has three parts. The large part is for #1 products (grain products, vegetables and fruit). The part where my little helpers used to sit is for #2 groceries (milk products, meat and alternatives). The third part is the lower rack for #3 products (fats, oils and others).
Think big
Look at the food guidelines rainbow and make more choices from the two outer bands – grain products, vegetables and fruit. Pick these products in abundance to fill the big part of your cart. Load your cart with high-fibre cereals, breads, grains, veggies and fruit. We should choose plant foods in abundance because:
- Foods from plants are mostly made up of the complex carbohydrates and fibre that our bodies need.
- They contain so little fat that you can forget about it, apart from olives, avocado and coconut.
- They contain no dietary cholesterol.
- They are loaded with vitamins and minerals.
- In baking goods, some ingredient lists will have the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated.” Try to choose these items less often.
Think smaller
Make fewer choices from the two inner bands of the rainbow – the milk products and the meat and alternatives. We do need to choose some of these foods because:
- They come directly or indirectly from animals and seafood. Milk products, meat, fish and shellfish all provide protein.
- Many are sources of iron – in a form more readily absorbed than from plant foods – and calcium, zinc and vitamin B12.
- They all contain dietary cholesterol and many contain fat – and often saturated fat – both of which we should try to reduce in our diets.
- Be deliberate about choosing lower-fat milk products, leaner meat, fish and legumes high in protein, like dried peas, beans and lentils.
- Try to choose foods that contain the lower amounts of saturated fatty acids in both this section and the third section.
Think lower
Be cautious about picking foods not listed on the rainbow – the fats, oils and others – because:
- These don’t offer enough nutritional value relative to their high fat content.
- Too much fat means an increased risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
- Most of us tend to eat too much of these foods (about 36-38 percent of our daily calories).
Most experts consider that the fat in our daily diet should equal no more than 30 percent. The daily fat intake recommended for the average woman who consumes 1,800-2,000 calories/day is 65 grams (13 teaspoons) or less; for the average man who consumes 2,300-3,000 calories/day it is 90 grams (18 teaspoons) or less.
Heartsmart shopping list
When you make your shopping list, use the top half of the paper for The HeartSmart Shopper book’s list of #1 items. On the bottom half of the page, use the top two-thirds for animal protein items and the remaining area for fatty products.
This shopping list reflects the way you fill your shopping cart and reinforces the importance of the food groups and how to establish healthy, balanced eating habits. Posting your shopping list on the fridge and adding to it also helps to reinforce this for you and your family.
The book is also broken into sections. Section #1 is full of tips to help you modify your daily diet, how to tell how much fat is in foods. For example there are three teaspoons of fat in instant noodles compared to none in plain pasta; two teaspoons of fat in a croissant compared to almost none in a bun or bagel.
There are tips to use to boost nutrition, information about the foods we eat, food trends and food history, tips of pennywise foolproof buying, storing and cooking, tips about nutritious foods kids will love, and even a section on the most common questions.
There is information about soluble and insoluble fibre and the best sources of each. North Americans need to double their fibre intake. Josephson suggests ways to do this. She also includes favorite recipes and how to shop for vegetables and fruit to get the best flavor.
The author tells how to stave off osteoporosis, how to cut fat without cutting milk, how to be choosy with cheese, and how to fat budget with #2 food.
It compares different fats and oils, includes dressing recipes, and suggests low-fat substitutes for snacking.
The last portion of the book suggests loading your plate the same way you fill your Heartsmart shopping cart. Load up with grains, fruits and veggies, be selective with lower-fat meat and milk products and go slow on the fats and oils. It also gives suggestions for one-minute mighty breakfasts, power lunchbags, and dinners in a dash with actual recipes.
The appendix has information on estimating your personal fat budget, fats and heart health, figuring out the percentage of fat in a food, sources of cholesterol and what nutrition claims mean. It also lists other cookbooks from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
The publisher of this book is Douglas & McIntyre, 1615 Venables Street, Vancouver, B.C.,V5L 2H1. It is available for $9.95 in most bookstores.
