The American Heart Association has published a “2021 Dietary Guidance to Improve Cardiovascular Health” this week in their journal Circulation. This guidance focuses on the role that nutrition plays in all stages of life on cardiovascular health and the importance of maintaining a healthy eating pattern that takes into account the balance, variety, amounts and combinations of foods that you eat on a regular basis. They point out that it’s not about focusing on individual foods or fad diets, but instead adopting a lifestyle that is sustainable in the long term.
Their evidence-based guidance outlines 10 features of a heart-healthy dietary pattern:
They also point out that the dietary fiber in plant foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes, is associated with better heart health; a high-quality diet is associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, heart disease and related mortality, cancer and related mortality, diabetes, and neurogenerative diseases; healthy dietary patterns like the Mediterranean-style diet are linked to better cognitive abilities and slower decline with age. The added bonus comes with the fact that mostly plant-based diets also benefit our environment because animal-based food production and consumption contribute substantially to greenhouse gas emissions, and water and land usage, resulting in a lower carbon footprint.
We also need to overcome societal challenges to adhering to heart-healthy dietary patterns. These include targeted marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, structural racism, neighborhood segregation, and food and nutrition insecurity. From the time of fetal development and early childhood through all life stages, it’s important to educate and establish lifelong healthy eating patterns in all segments of the population.
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