Hi there!
My name is Kathleen Turner and I'm a registered dietitian
working here at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
Over the next few slides, we're going to chat a little bit about
how to make heart healthy choices and how you can start to make
changes to your eating patterns to start thinking about eating
in a heart healthy way. So let's get started.
When we're talking about heart healthy eating,
we're really thinking about how can the food choices that I make
help to keep my heart healthy and what we know is that when
people make heart healthy food choices we see improvements in
things like your cholesterol, your triglycerides,
your blood pressure, your blood sugars,
can even help you to manage your weight as well
as your waist circumference.
It can also help lower your chance of developing heart
disease as well as lower your chances
of having a heart attack.
Now if you're watching this and thinking well I already have
heart disease, we also know that heart healthy eating can also
help slow the progression of heart disease.
Not only that but it can also help improve the
health of your arteries.
There are lots of reasons to start thinking about
making heart healthy choices.
So let's talk about what those heart healthy choices are.
We're going to start out by talking about meal timing so
we're going to go right back to basics.
Now it sounds like a really simple thing but it's not always
so easy when you're at home thinking about
making these choices.
What you want to aim to do is to try and eat your breakfast
within about an hour of waking up.
It doesn't mean that you wake, your feet hit the floor and
you're already eating breakfast.
What it means is that, maybe get up,
read your newspaper and then eat breakfast but ideally within
that hour of first waking up.
It doesn't matter what time you're waking up whether you're
getting up at six in the morning or eight in the morning,
it's within that hour.
After you've had breakfast, what you want to try and do is aim to
be eating every 4 to 6 hours following that.
So if you get up and eat breakfast at 8,
you might have lunch at noon, supper at 5,
snack at 10 and bed at 11 but it doesn't really matter what time
those meals are, so long as you're aiming to have
the 4 to 6 hour gap.
Now unfortunately in today's day and age,
we don't always get to eat at exactly 4 to 6
hour time intervals.
So if you know that you're going to be longer than 4 to 6 hours
between meals, what you can think about is trying to plan a
snack and you want to choose something that is going to fill
you up and sort of tie you over to prevent you from getting
ravenous before that next meal.
So you might have something like 2 tablespoons of nuts and a
quarter of a cup of dried fruit; you might choose a piece of
toast and peanut butter; or maybe you would have a yogurt.
There are lots of different options but a little healthy
snack is certainly something you want to consider when you're
getting into long gaps between meals.
When we're talking about vegetables and fruits,
we have lots of evidence that tell us when people make or
people aim to eat fruit and vegetables every day and they
are able to include 7 to 10 servings;
we see a lot of improvements in things like blood pressure,
cholesterol, triglycerides, help you to manage your weight.
Just eating enough fruits and vegetables has a lot of
heart healthy benefits.
Canada's food guide recommends between 7 and 10 servings of
fruit and vegetables in a day depending on your age and your
sex, you really want to try and aim for that 7 servings of
fruits and vegetables.
Now a serving is not as big as you might think.
A serving of vegetables is only about half of a cup.
Now if you cup your hand, that's about half of a cup.
A serving of fruit is also half of a cup.
So if you're finding the idea of trying to eat 7 to 10 servings
of fruits and vegetables in a day a bit daunting,
break it down.
What you're really thinking is, can I eat a fruit or a vegetable
at every meal?
And if you can do that, you're going to be closer to that 7
servings of fruits and vegetables.
Now they don't have to be fresh.
They can be frozen.
That's a great alternative, a great option.
You can keep it in your freezer and pull it out
when you need it.
So fresh or frozen is equally as good when it comes to nutrition.
If you're going to eat canned fruits or vegetables,
canned fruit is a really good option;
you just want to pour off the juice that's in there.
If you choose to eat canned vegetables,
what you want to think about is rinsing those vegetables with
water really well.
By doing this, you get rid of about half the sodium.
So the bottom line, when it comes to fruits and vegetables,
you want to try and include one at every meal in an effort to
get to that 7 servings.
Alright, let's talk a little bit about fibre.
Fibre has a number of health benefits and one of those
benefits is that it can help to lower your LDL cholesterol
and that's soluble fibre that can help to lower
your LDL cholesterol.
There are two types of fibre.
There is soluble fibre and there is insoluble fibre.
You don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about whether
you're including soluble or insoluble fibre.
Many foods, particularly fruits and vegetables,
actually have a combination of soluble
and insoluble fibre in them.
So what you really want to be thinking about is food.
So which foods do you want to choose more often?
Well part of getting your fibre recommendation is getting your 7
servings of fruits and vegetables in a day.
The other thing that you can do is to start choosing
whole grain products.
So things like brown rice, brown bread or whole wheat pasta.
Those choices are going to have more fibre in them than white
bread, white pasta or white rice.
And again, these changes can happen slowly.
You might try the brown pasta and once you figure out that you
like the brown pasta then maybe you'll try the brown rice but
you want to be working towards making most of your choices,
whole grain choices.
Let's talk about portion size.
People will often say that this is the thing they
find the most challenging.
You can look at this plate and think
"Wow, that's pretty simple!".
But when you get home and you're starting to think about what
you're going to eat, it can become more challenging.
This is something that's really easy to think about when you sit
down at your table and you're starting to eat.
What you really want to try and think about is the portions of
your starch and protein.
So you'll notice the bottom left hand corner has starch in there.
So things like your potatoes, your brown rice,
your brown pasta...
those types of foods.
When sitting at home, you can actually make a fist and that's
about how much starch you want to aim for in a meal.
That's not a lot but it is certainly enough that you would
feel satisfied.
When we're talking about your protein, things like your fish,
your lean meat, chicken, beans, lentils,
those are things that include protein.
That can be the other quarter of your plate.
Now sitting at home, I want you to look at
the palm of your hand.
That's about how big that piece of meat you eat should be.
Now in terms of thickness, you want that piece of meat to be
about the thickness of your pinkie finger.
So now you figured, okay, I want to have a fist full of starch
and I want to have about a palm of protein.
What you want to fill up on here is vegetables.
You want to try and have at least two kinds of vegetables at
your meal and it should be about half your plate.
Vegetables are very filling and they're low in calories.
They also taste great so that's what you want to fill up on.
So when you sit down to your meal you think, okay,
I'm going to have a little bit of my potatoes or rice or pasta
and I'm going to have a little piece of meat or fish or chicken
and then I'm going to have a lot of vegetables to go with that.
You could also have a glass of milk and maybe you want a piece
of fruit for dessert but this is ideally what you want your plate
to look like.
So you're sitting there and you're like, holy man,
my plate doesn't look like that at all.
This comes with time.
You don't have to make changes to your eating overnight.
You can start to make small goals.
So maybe you might start out by decreasing your protein piece a
bit or you might increase your vegetables a little bit and
that's okay.
Things don't have to happen overnight.
You can take your time to make these changes.
When we're talking about fats, fats in food have an impact on
the cholesterol in your body.
There are three main types of fats.
There are unsaturated fats, saturated fats and trans fats.
They all have different impacts on your cholesterol.
So we're going to start off with the good news and we're going to
talk about unsaturated fats.
Unsaturated fats can help to lower your LDL cholesterol which
is your lousy cholesterol.
When you choose these unsaturated fats
over saturated fats.
So where do you find unsaturated fats?
Well you find unsaturated fats in liquid oils and generally
speaking, those oils come from vegetables so it's things like
canola oil, olive oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil.
These kinds of oils are full of unsaturated fats and these are
what you want to be choosing at home.
So if you're making a stir fry, you can use canola oil instead
of something like butter or lard.
Many of us have already made that change but it's always good
to think about that on a regular basis.
Other good sources of unsaturated fats are things like
nuts and seed, avocado, nut butters like peanut butter or
almond butter.
These are all things you want to choose more often.
Talking a little bit about these bad fats or saturated
and trans fats.
Now saturated fats come mainly from animal sources.
So things like steak, red meat will have a lot of saturated
fats in it but you also find saturated fats in chicken and
pork tenderloin but you find much less of it.
So the big culprits in what we eat are typically red meat
and dairy products.
So what does this mean for you at home?
This means that you want to try and include red meat only once
or twice a week.
The other nights of the week or at lunch time you want to choose
things like fish, chicken, lean cuts of pork,
perhaps pork tenderloin and you might even want to try and
include a vegetarian meal.
So something like a vegetarian chili or maybe making
a stir fry with tofu.
But again, you know you don't have to be a
vegetarian to be healthy.
You just want to choose those red meats in moderation.
Now when it comes to trans fats, we find trans fats
mainly in processed foods.
We're seeing less and less trans fats now but it is important to
be aware that they are still out there.
So your best way to find out about trans fats is to look on a
food label and aim to find something that has close to zero
as possible because those trans fats have no redeeming features.
They're going to make your LDL or your lousy cholesterol go up,
and your HDL or your happy cholesterol go down.
So you really do want to try and limit those trans fats.
The bottom line when it comes to saturated and trans fats is you
want to look at your food label and aim to find things
as close to zero as possible in trans fats.
For saturated fats, you want to limit red meat to only once or
twice a week and try and choose some low fat dairy products so
1% or skim milk, lower fat yogurts and maybe even
trying some low fat cheese.
Salt.
We're going to talk a little bit about salt now.
Salt is made up of sodium and chloride.
The dangerous part of salt is the sodium.
Sodium increases your risk for developing high blood pressure
and high blood pressure increases your risk of having
a heart attack or stroke.
In a day, we recommend that you have about
1500 to 2400 mg of sodium.
A teaspoon of salt has 2300 mg of sodium in it.
Now what we know is that most of the sodium that we
are eating is actually coming from processed foods.
It's not so much the salt that you might add in cooking
or the salt that you might add at the table.
It's really coming from the foods that you eat that you
buy that are already made.
What you can do is you can actually read a food label
to find out how much sodium is in there.
You're aiming to find something that has less than 10 percent
daily value written on the food label for sodium.
That's your target.
Now salt is very much an acquired taste.
If you're used to eating a lot of salt,
so you put salt in your cooking and you add salt at the table,
and if all of a sudden you go cold turkey and stop eating that
salt, you're going to notice a really big difference.
You're going to find your food tastes a little bit bland.
You can do a cold turkey and you will adapt to that flavour.
The other option is, of course, to do it gradually.
If normally you put a teaspoon of salt in your recipe,
try three quarters of a teaspoon,
then you can do half of a teaspoon,
then maybe a quarter of a teaspoon and you might be able
to get rid of it all together.
If you're salting food at the table,
instead of salting your food, salt your hand then put the salt
on your food from your hand and gradually cut back.
As you use less salt, you get used to the flavour of
things not having that salty taste and you'll start
to really like that.
You may want to use other ways of spicing your food.
Herbs and spices are a great way of giving things flavour.
You may also want to use things like lemon juice
or vinegar on your food.
It gives your mouth a nice taste but it doesn't have
that salt in it.
Feel free to use other spices as much as you want.
We'll talk a little bit about alcohol.
You should always check with your physician about alcohol
but generally speaking, alcohol is considered safe.
We do recommend alcohol in moderation.
Now moderation is always the key piece here.
What moderation means is 1 to 2 drinks per day to a maximum of
14 drinks per week for men and 9 drinks per week for women.
One mixed drink is considered about one
and a half fluid ounces and that could be something like
vodka, gin, brandy, or rum.
When we're talking about wine, a drink is considered five
ounces and when we're talking about beer or wine coolers,
a drink is considered 12 ounces.
This is a good thing to keep in mind if you choose to include
alcohol in what you're eating and drinking.
We're going to talk a little bit about how to make
changes to your eating patterns.
When you're thinking about making changes to your eating
patterns, these changes don't have to happen overnight,
they can take time.
You want to start out small.
Start by picking a goal you are certain that you can succeed at.
Once you've succeeded that goal, you might want to
set another goal for yourself but these changes
don't have to be overnight.
You can take your time to make these changes.
That's all I have to say for the nutrition section but if you'd
like more information you can refer to your
healthy living guide.
Thank you very much.