Q: Please give a list of foods we should eat and foods we should avoid in order to keep the heart healthy and avoid heart attacks.

SN, Mumbai

Making good food choices is important in ensuring healthy blood circulation and consequently a healthy heart. Heart-healthy foods are foods that would lower the bad LDL cholesterol in the blood, raise the good HDL cholesterol, maintain healthy levels of blood triglycerides, keep the blood from clotting easily, have antioxidant properties and prevent high blood homocysteine levels. Though you need to customise a heart-healthy diet in accordance with the results of your metabolic marker tests (a new generation of screening tests to assess your risk of heart attacks), here are some general guidelines you can follow:

Have at least 400 to 500 gms of fresh vegetables and fruits daily. Other heart-healthy foods include oats, barley, beans, unbroken whole pulses, unpolished rice, wholegrains, soya products, oily fish and nuts like almonds, walnuts and peanuts. Also use freely in your food onions and garlic which have blood-thinning properties, and spices like turmeric, cloves, cinnamon, cumin and fenugreek which contain powerful antioxidants.

Eat adequate amounts of protein derived from fish, skinless chicken, egg whites, low-fat milk and milk products, soya products, beans, peas and whole pulses. Allow only 50 per cent of your protein intake form animal sources. The rest should be vegetarian. At the same time take care to eat green leafy vegetables, lentils and beans (rich in folic acid and vitamin B6) whenever you eat animal protein. This will keep your blood homocysteine at healthy levels while giving you all the benefits of animal protein.

For cooking use those oils that contain predominantly mono-unsaturated fats ? olive, almond, groundnut, rapeseed (canola), mustard and rice-bran oils. Avoid saturated fats found in butter, ghee, palm and coconut oils. Avoid the predominantly omega-6 containing poly-unsaturated oils like sunflower, safflower (kardi), corn, cottonseed and sesame cooking oil. They tend to promote inflamm- ation thereby blocking arteries. Avoid hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats like margarine, vanaspati and bakery and processed foods.

Avoid eating diets very low in fats as these could be extra high in carbohydrates. Some of these ?very-low-fat high-carbohydrate-diets? could convert the LDL cholesterol to a special small and dense variety called LDL Pattern-B, which dangerously increases the risk of heart attacks.

Although a healthy diet can substantially reduce the risk of heart attacks, you need to deal with anxiety and stress, control high blood pressure and diabetes if present, quit smoking, consume alcohol in moder- ation, plan a good exercise programme and slim down if overweight in order to have a strong, healthy heart.