A Heart-Smart Diet
The right diet can help prevent some forms of heart disease. To stay healthy, your body needs the right balance of foods. A “heart-smart” diet means:

Keeping your total calories under control
Eating as much vegetables as you want (at least several servings per day)
Eating more fruits
Replacing butter and margarine with mono-saturated and polyunsaturated oils
Avoiding trans fats and saturated fats
Eating whole grain foods instead of refined carbohydrates and potatoes
Getting your protein from fish, egg whites, legumes, beans, nuts and seeds.
Increasing your physical activity and trying to dedicate time for exercise every day

About Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Omega-3 fatty acids—also known as n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs)—are important for a number of bodily functions, including the relaxation and contraction of muscles, blood clotting, digestion, fertility, cell division, growth, and movement of calcium and other substances in and out of cells.

The three major types of omega-3 fatty acids are alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). ALA is found in seeds, vegetable oils (canola, flaxseed, and soybean), green leafy vegetables, nuts, and beans. ALA is converted, usually in small amounts, into EPA and DHA, after it is ingested. Fish oil and fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring, and tuna are the primary sources of EPA and DHA. Algae oils are a vegetarian source of DHA. Omega-3s are available as dietary supplements, usually in the form of capsules or oils. Commonly used supplements include fish oil, flaxseed oil, and walnut oil.

Most American diets provide at least 10 times more omega-6 than omega-3 fatty acids. Scientists generally agree that people should consume less omega-6s and more omega-3s for good health; however, the best ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s has not been determined.

By Robert Preidt

THURSDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) — Many reduced-calorie restaurant and packaged foods in the United States have more calories than indicated on their nutritional labeling, a new study reports.

Tufts University researchers analyzed 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant foods and found they contained an average of 18 percent more calories than the stated values. The team also checked 10 frozen meals bought from supermarkets and found they had an average of 8 percent more calories than what was printed on the label.

Three of the supermarket-purchased meals and seven restaurant foods contained up to twice their stated amount of calories.

An added complication was identified with some restaurant meals. Five restaurants provided side dishes at no extra cost, and the average amount of calories in the side dishes was greater than for the entrees they accompanied, the researchers reported.

The study appears in the January issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

“These findings suggest that stated energy contents of reduced energy meals obtained from restaurants and supermarkets are not consistently accurate and, in this study, average more than measured values, especially when free side dishes were taken into account, which on average contained more energy than the entrees alone,” wrote the researchers, led by Susan B. Roberts, director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts’ Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging.

They noted that a “positive energy balance of only 5 percent per day for an individual requiring 2,000 kcal/day could lead to a 10-pound weight gain in a single year.”

Not only could this hamper people’s attempts to control their weight, the researchers wrote, but it also could “reduce the potential benefit of recent policy initiatives to disseminate information on food energy content at the point of purchase.”

SOURCE: American Dietetic Association, news release, Jan. 5, 2010