Borbon, Cebu - Healthy and nutritious behavior can lower heart disease risk. Understanding nutrition labels can help you choose heart-healthy and nutrient-dense foods for a healthier diet not only for this fist-sized muscular organ that pumps blood to the entire body but for your overall wellbeing.
It is important that you know what to look for in the food label especially since it carries a lot of information. As an individual that is conscious of a healthy diet, it is important for you to know and interpret the terms used in the label to come up with a diet that will benefit your heart.
Aiming for a healthy diet is not just about cutting down calories. Paying attention to food labels before you pick up anything from the grocery store is an essential step towards a stronger heart.
Additionally, here are some amazing benefits of reading and understanding food labels:
1. Information that is vital for your healthy heart. The two key things that food labels offer in terms of information include ingredients as well as nutrition content. Other information gives the reader well-defined segregation of amounts of calories, saturated and unsaturated fats, vitamins, carbohydrates, and protein. This is the aspect that you should examine well when you are planning to make some dietary changes.
2. Help you identify sugar content. For instance, if you find a label stating ‘high fructose corn syrup as one of the ingredients, you should know it is just another name for sugar. For people with cardiovascular diseases, you must be careful about consuming too much sugar, too.
3. Examine the calories per serving well. When you understand and use food labels properly, you can keep a tab on how many servings you are consuming. In addition, this will help you maintain your desirable body weight.
4. Keep track of high sodium content. When choosing healthy options, go for foods that contain lower amounts of sodium. Too much salt can cause fluid to build up around the heart and lungs, making the heart work harder. Many other packed foods can also be sneaky of sodium, but the numbers don’t lie even if they do not taste particularly salty.
Now that you know the advantages of reading labels on packaged foods, be cautious before adding them to your cart on your next visit to the grocery store. Added to that is following a heart-healthy lifestyle to prevent heart disease that includes avoidance of smoking or tobacco use, get moving: aim for at least 30 to 60 minutes of activity daily, eat a heart-healthy diet, maintain a healthy weight, get good quality sleep, manage stress and have a regular health screening such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and type 2 diabetes screening. If you have some diet-related concerns, seek expert assistance from a Registered Nutritionist-Dietitian near you. // ND II Teresito M. Caayaman III, RND
