What to eat for a healthy heart (start with avocado on toast)

“Avocados contain healthy monounsaturated fats, as well as magnesium, vitamins C, E and K, and some fibre, all of which are heart-healthy nutrients,” says the nutrition therapist Ian Marber. “They can’t be seen as a single solution to better cardiovascular health, but they are one of the better foods we should eat.” We all know we should cut down on alcohol, processed ready meals, red meat and too much other saturated animal fat. Here’s what else you should be adding (or subtracting) from your diet:

Consume a pot of yoghurt a day
Dairy foods contain a range of micronutrients, including calcium, magnesium and potassium, that are involved in the regulation of blood pressure, a known risk factor for heart disease,” says Marber, but yoghurt appears to have additional benefits for heart health.

In a study involving 915 adults by Dr Alexandra Wade at the University of South Australia it was shown that adding even a daily dollop or two of yoghurt to the diets of people with mild hypertension resulted in lowered blood pressure. “For those who already consumed yoghurt regularly, the results were even stronger, with blood pressure readings nearly seven points lower than those who did not consume yoghurt,” Wade says.

There were similar findings with the 56,000 women (ages 30-55) with high blood pressure in the Nurses’ Health Study and 18,000 men (ages 40-75) in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, results of which were published in the American Journal of Hypertension. Higher intakes of yoghurt were associated with a 30 per cent reduction in risk of a heart attack among women and a 19 per cent reduction in the men.

Eat a 9g dose of dried-cranberry powder every day
This is the equivalent of eating 100g of fresh cranberries a day, and it could do wonders for cardiovascular health, say researchers at King’s College London.

For a study published last week in the journal Food & Function, Dr Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, a senior lecturer in nutrition, asked 45 healthy men to consume the dried-cranberry powder for one month to find out if it had an effect on heart and blood vessel function. She found that the high dose of beneficial polyphenol plant compounds provided by the cranberries resulted in widening of blood vessels allowing for better blood flow through the heart.

Just 9g of dried-cranberry powder a day is the equivalent of eating 100g of fresh berries

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“The fact that these improvements in cardiovascular health were seen with an amount of cranberries that can be reasonably consumed daily makes cranberry an important fruit in the prevention of cardiovascular disease,” Rodriguez-Mateos says.

Eat a handful of walnuts or pecans every day
“Nuts and seeds are a rich source of omega-3 alpha-linolenic fatty acids and of fibre, which are both known to have a beneficial effect on heart health,” Marber says. “A mix of them is a great addition for heart health.”

Two studies last year confirmed that pecans and walnuts in particular may be good for the heart. For one of the trials involving 708 healthy older adults, a team of Spanish researchers found that those who were asked to eat a handful of walnuts — about six or seven shelled nuts — every day for two years lowered their levels of LDL “bad” cholesterol, considered a risk factor for heart disease.

Pecans could be even more potent with a University of Georgia study showing the tree nut “dramatically reduced” cholesterol levels in a group of 56 adults at risk of heart disease. Participants were asked to add 68g of pecans (about 16-18 whole shelled nuts) a day to their diet or to substitute pecans for regular foods with the equivalent number of calories (470). A control group ate no nuts. After eight weeks, the pecan-eaters had reduced total cholesterol by an average 5 per cent and LDL cholesterol by 6-9 per cent.

“Whether people added them or substituted other foods in the diet for them, we still saw improvements and pretty similar responses in total and LDL cholesterol,” says Jamie Cooper, professor of nutritional sciences and the study author.

Avoid croissants, white bread and pasta
Eating too many refined “white carbs” such as croissants, white bread, noodles and pasta, was associated with a higher risk of major heart disease by the authors of a study in The BMJlast year. In 16 years of analysis of 137,130 participants in 21 countries, it was shown that eating more than seven servings of refined grains a day was associated with a 33 per cent greater risk of heart disease. No significant adverse heart-health effects came from consuming wholegrain carbs.

“Refined carbs lack fibre, which plays a helpful role in reducing cholesterol,” Marber says. “Soluble fibre found in oat bran, barley, nuts, seeds, and some fruits and vegetables forms a gel that helps to extract cholesterol from the blood and insoluble fibre, found in wholegrains, has been associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease in many studies.”

Our bodies need 30g of fibre a day to stay healthy and most of us get just 18g daily in our diets.

Eat a small bowl of porridge or three oatcakes a day
Oats contain about 11g of fibre per 100g and, like many wholegrains, are a rich source of soluble and insoluble fibre. Where they are superior is in the type of fibre they contain called beta-glucan.

“It attracts cholesterol in the intestines and encourages its excretion,” Marber says. “It also provides protection against oxidation of LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol in the arteries, all of which makes it a very heart-friendly food.”

Studies have shown we need about 3g of beta-glucan a day for these benefits, an amount Marber says can be provided by three oatcakes, some Bircher muesli or a small bowl of porridge.

Cut down on salty snacks
On average, British adults consume about 8.4g of salt a day, well above the recommended target of 6g and not low enough to benefit our heart health. Too high an intake is associated with raised blood pressure, which is in turn linked to heart disease.

“Cutting down on salt would have a dramatic effect on reducing strokes and heart disease in the UK,” says Graham MacGregor, the chairman of scientific campaign group Action on Salt (AoS), professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine (Barts and the London) and honorary consultant at St George’s Hospital, London.

Processed foods are among the saltiest foods, but snacks are also adding to our intake and it’s not just kettle chips and peanuts that are problematic. Last year an investigation by AoS revealed that even seemingly healthy snacks such as hummus chips and lentil crisps can be as salty as seawater.

Use coconut oil sparingly
This foodie favourite is viewed less favourably by heart experts. Unlike most plant-based vegetable oils, coconut oil is solid at room temperature and comprises 85 per cent saturated fat compared with the 63 per cent in butter and 40 per cent in lard.

“Some have argued that it also contains a large amount of medium-chain fats, which are metabolised differently,” says Dermot Neely, a consultant lipidologist and spokesman for Heart UK, the cholesterol charity. “However, the predominant fats in coconut oils are lauric acid, myristic acid and palmitic acid, which are classified as long-chain saturated fats and have all been shown to raise the level of damaging LDL cholesterol in the blood, which raises the risk of heart disease.”

Neely says it is best used sparingly as a flavouring for food. “Coconut oil is a very concentrated form of saturated fat that can cause a dramatic and concerning increases in cholesterol in some people,” he says. “Nobody should use a lot of it.”