What Are the Best Food Swaps For a Healthy Heart?
While most people want to live healthier lives, cutting down on your favorite foods can be a hard sell. So we asked Dr. Beth Abramson, a cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and co-chair of the American College of Cardiology Hypertension Working Group, to share some simple food swaps that make eating a heart-healthy diet easy.
Chicken instead of beef burgers: The next time you’re craving a burger, Abramson recommended making your own — and cutting the red meat. The American Heart Association encourages limiting the amount of red meat in our diets because it contains more saturated fat than other protein sources such as chicken, fish, and plants. Saturated fat can increase cholesterol levels, putting you at a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
One study found that eating red meat daily triples the levels of a chemical in the body that is linked to heart disease. With this in mind, Abramson feeds her family chicken burgers or makes a patty from minced chicken, which she sometimes adds veal to.
Excerpted from Insider
