Illustration: Maintaining a healthy heart. (Image via Daily Sabah)

Health alert: These foods will cost you your heart! Beware!

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Business & Industry
Medical and Health
Sep 20, 2019
1431
Taking care of your heart is important. The heart, undoubtedly, is the most vital organ for our body. Many scientific studies and research have proven that a healthy lifestyle by maintaining your diet and exercising regularly helps in keeping your heart beating.

The point of these healthy lifestyles is to prevent cardiovascular disease, where there is too much fat clogging your arteries which leads to chest pain, heart attack, and even stroke. To prevent all of this degenerative disease, you also need to pay attention to what you eat.

Then, what is the food and beverages that you should not eat nor drink too much?

Food with high sugar, salt, and fat leads to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Especially, pay attention to the nutrition facts before grubbing them. Below are the examples of the food with a high level of the three.

1. RED MEAT AND PROCESSED MEAT

We tend to give our children and ourselves a plate of sausages or nuggets for breakfast. You might want to reduce it now as processed meat has a high level of saturated fat in it. This saturated fat contributes to the high level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol for your body.

So, we can eat regular meat then? Not necessarily. While it is not as bad as processed meat, high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol are detected in meat such as pork, beef, and lamb. In other words, try eating “white” meat such as chicken.

2. SODA, ALCOHOL, AND COOKIES

Soda and cookies are the next dangerous foods for your hearts. It is not a secret that soda and cookies contain high sugar. Cookies, however, contribute more to the degeneration of your heart as it contains high saturated fat level, taken from the butter used to make it.

Butter is the usual example of saturated fat in your daily life. Too much butter consumption leads to a high level of LDL. Therefore, change to ingredients with unsaturated fat such as olive oil.

While reducing your cookies intake, you need to pay attention to soda too. While many people don’t realize it, high sugar often comes from beverages than food. Too much drinking soda leads to diabetes and obesity.

On the other hand, alcoholic beverages are a total “no” for people suffering from hypertension. Then, is it safe for people without hypertension to drink alcohol? The answer is still “No”. Having similar drawbacks as soda, drinking too much alcohol leads to cardiovascular disease and obesity.

3. FRENCH FRIES

Who does not love French fries? With a crunchy texture and chili sauce, French fries are a dish known all over the world, sold at various fast-food chains.

However, it is also known that too much of it is not good for the heart. With high levels of salt and saturated fat, people who eat French fries twice or thrice a week have more chances of early mortality. Not to mention, its conventional cooking method, deep-fry, causes the formation of saturated fat and high LDL.

There you go, kinds of food and beverages you need to avoid to keep your heart alive. As listed above, we suggest you consume more fruit and vegetables and shift to white meat from red. Also, avoid deep-frying your food. Instead, steaming or grilling is better than deep-frying. And last but not least, switch from butter and regular oil to fish oil or olive oil which is rich in unsaturated fat.

Source: https://www.cnnindonesia.com/gaya-hidup/20190919111515-255-431899/10-makanan-penyebab-penyakit-jantung

Medical , Health , Heart , Lifestyle , Diet , Exercise , Prevention