The Right Choices for Making Heart Healthy Meals for Seniors
For more tips on heart healthy meals for seniors, call San Diego Home Caregivers!
Our senior care experts realize that it’s challenging to make heart healthy meals for seniors when nutrition recommendations appear to constantly change. We had been told that saturated fats from options such as butter, red meat and fried food were harmful and could affect a person’s chances of developing heart issues, but later research revealed there isn’t enough evidence that those who gave up these delicacies improved their heart health – and so, we went back to our previous ways due to the go-ahead to choose butter instead of margarine.
And yet, as reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, scientists clarify that the lack of apparent results in reducing fatty foods is likely associated with equally poor dietary choices selected in the place of those fats – such as refined carbs. In the study, it was shared that those who exchanged fatty foods in their diet with healthier options, such as olive oil (a polyunsaturated fat) and whole grains did reduce their heart disease risk up to 25%.
As stated by Adela Hruby, one of many researchers in this study, “We know that people don’t just drop 10% of their calories…and not replace them with other things. What they’re adding in to replace what they’re not eating is really important.”
The study, led by Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was amazingly in-depth, monitoring the results of almost 130,000 participants of both genders over thirty years. Keeping an eye on dietary choices and any heart-related conditions, it was determined that both women and men who consumed carbohydrates instead of fatty foods were attaining a nearly equal threat of cardiovascular disease – a statistic overlooked in previous studies that had determined there was no benefit to decreasing the level of saturated fat in a meal plan.
So, what might be the takeaway from this study? Improved heart health may be gained by not just reducing the total amount of saturated fat in a dietary plan, but also by choosing healthier items instead of foods with high levels of sugar or processed flour-based foods.
San Diego Home Caregivers is always available to plan and prepare heart healthy meals that are not just nutritious, but tasty, helping older adults reduce their risk for heart attacks and disease. We are able to also assist older adults with:
- Making appropriate dietary choices, and shopping for groceries so that fresh, healthy foods are always on hand
- Medication reminders
- Carrying out physician-recommended activity programs
- Safe accompaniment to doctor appointments as well as other outings
- And more
You can reach us at (619) 487-9000 to find out more about our home care in Carlsbad and the surrounding areas. For more information on on each of the communities where we provide care, please see our Communities Served page.
