TOGETHER WE’RE BETTER

These food duos can help your heart health grow exponentially

When it comes to heart health, food can be your best medicine. But protecting this vital organ goes beyond avoiding unhealthy foods. To slash your risk of heart woes, it’s also important to up your intake of foods that are full of the nutrients and other compounds, such as antioxidants, that research shows can help keep your ticker beating strong for years to come.

Spinach and avocado

We now know a lot more about how to prevent cardiovascular disease, including both heart attacks and strokes, and it’s clear that healthy eating and living (such as getting plenty of exercise!) can make a huge difference.

There are certain foods that, instead of taking a solo adventure to improve our heart health, seem to perform better when set free to mingle. This is called food synergy: where the benefits of two or more foods eaten together can be greater than the sum of their parts. When working in unison, they amplify their nutritional benefits.

While researchers have only just begun to untangle all the super combinations, these good-chemistry eats and sips can pack outsize benefits for the well-being of your heart.

Dark leafy greens such as spinach and kale are already nutritional heavy hitters, but if you really want to reap their rewards, make sure to fatten them up. Research shows that consuming foods such as kale, tomatoes, and carrots—good sources of carotenoid antioxidants including lycopene and beta carotene—with a dietary source of fat, such as avocado, can increase how much of these heart-friendly plant compounds we absorb. The reason is simple: antioxidants such as lutein, lycopene, and beta carotene, which work to fend off the cell-damaging effects of free radicals to help protect heart health and promote healthier aging, are fat soluble, so they are better absorbed when consumed along with a source of dietary fat. The upshot is that whenever colourful veggies are on your plate, make sure to fatten them up with healthy fat sources, including olive oil, avocado, nuts, or seeds.

Kind-hearted

A recent study found that consuming avocado daily can help lower levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol—particularly a form of LDL cholesterol that is especially detrimental to heart health. Researchers credit some of this benefit to the antioxidants, including lutein, found in avocado.

Turmeric and black pepper

While turmeric is increasingly being studied for its heart-benefitting, lipid-lowering, and anti-inflammatory powers, we don’t absorb its main bioactive compound, curcumin, into the bloodstream very well.

The good news is that a chemical found in black pepper called piperine can greatly bolster our ability to take up curcumin. Piperine could make it easier for curcumin to pass through the intestinal wall and into your bloodstream. So, whenever you add the golden spice to curries, soups, sauces, and scrambled eggs, don’t forget to also include a few twists of the pepper grinder.

Kind-hearted

Research shows that when people who are at risk for heart disease consumed higher amounts of spices such as turmeric for a month, they tested lower in levels of pro-inflammatory compounds, including cytokines.

Oats and berries

Because iron is vital to transporting oxygen throughout the body to tissues, including your heart, it’s best to make sure your iron stores are well stocked. (Correcting an iron deficiency or anemia is important to improving heart function.)

A recent study linked iron deficiency with a 24 percent higher risk of heart disease and a 26 percent higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease compared with not having an iron deficiency.

Of course, a hunk of steak is a good source of the mineral, but you can also get iron from plant-based foods such as oats, beans, lentils, tofu, fortified cereals, and spinach. There’s a catch, though: only 2 to 20 percent of the iron found in plant foods, called non-heme iron, makes its way from your digestive tract into your blood.

Mother Nature can lend a helping hand in the form of vitamin C (ascorbic acid)—present in berries, bell pepper, tomatoes, broccoli, and citrus, to name a few—which converts plant-based iron into a form that is more readily absorbed.

That makes it a good idea to top a steamy bowl of oatmeal with blueberries, load up a pot of bean-based chili with chopped peppers, and serve tofu with a side of broccoli. As a bonus, oats are rich in beta-glucan fibre that can help improve cholesterol numbers.

In addition, one study found that women aged 25 through 42 who ate more than three servings of blueberries and strawberries a week had a 32 percent lower risk of heart attack compared with those who ate less.

Kind-hearted

According to a recent study, women who ate ironfortified cereal with kiwi fruit, which is especially rich in vitamin C, were able to raise their iron levels.