Category: Heart-smart eating

– posts here focus on latest cardiac news or research about what we put into our mouths

“The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

Is there any veggie better than the humble and versatile potato? It is and always has been my very favourite comfort food. Potato pancakes with those crispy brown edges, twice-baked stuffed potatoes oozing with cottage-cheesey goodness, those exquisite first-of-the-season new potatoes tossed in my mother’s incomparable dill sauce, creamy garlic mashed at Sunday dinner – heaven, absolute heaven, every single forkful!

But potatoes sometimes get a bad rap for being fattening (especially given all the goop we like to scoop or pour or melt over them) and not quite as healthy as, say, the boring broccoli floret. Not so for Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission. Chris ate nothing but potatoes throughout October and November of 2010 (that’s about 20 5-ounce potatoes a day for 60 days) to help publicize the nutritional value of potatoes. He varied his clinically-supervised menu by eating things like potato pickles and even (seriously!) potato ice cream. (Read on for some of my favourite – and more conventional! – heart-healthy potato recipes!)   Continue reading ““The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”” →

Top 10 posts from Heart Sisters for 2010

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

2010 has been quite the year here at Heart Sisters! The little blog that began in 2009 after my heart attack simply as “cardiac rehab for my brain” has now published 257 articles, attracting over 100,000 visitors. New articles arrive here about every four days, depending on my health, and I never run out of emerging news about women’s heart disease, cardiac research, heart-smart recipes or heart-related trivia to write about!

The Toronto-based magazine More interviewed me this year for a February 2011 feature about Canadian women who have launched health-related websites, and a number of essays here have also been picked up by other much larger health sites, here, here or here, for example. Hundreds of people now follow Heart Sisters on Twitter, repost my links on their Facebook sites, or subscribe directly via email to receive updates on new postings.   Continue reading “Top 10 posts from Heart Sisters for 2010” →

Vegetarian-friendly religions

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas 

The well-known Mediterranean Diet recommended for optimal heart health calls for eating very little meat. Here in Canada, although our meat consumption is steadily decreasing according to Statistics Canada, we still average about 23.4 kilograms (about 52 pounds) of red meat per person per year. That puts us well behind the United States, Hungary, and Australia in total meat consumption.

But if you break it down into types of meat, people in Denmark eat more pork than anybody else in the world, Hong Kong leads chicken consumption, and, to nobody’s surprise, the Argentinians eat more beef.

So a heart-smart vegetarian in Buenos Aires might feel quite outnumbered, but elsewhere on earth would be among the majority.  An Apple A Day recently took a unique look at international vegetarianism and came up with some widespread religion-based connections.  Continue reading “Vegetarian-friendly religions” →

Thirty heart-healthy ways to love your veggies (and fruit!)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

We’re supposed to eat 2-4 servings of fruit plus 3-5 servings of vegetables every day. It’s a full-time job, especially for those of us raised in Ukrainian families where dill pickles were considered an ideal veggie serving. Fewer than one third of us eat even those lower limits.

And we’re fussy eaters.

Potatoes, for example, represent 44% of our fresh vegetable diet here in Canada. That doesn’t includes a significant increase, according to Statistics Canada, in our consumption of processed potatoes in the form of potato chips and frozen potato products. But carrots, lettuce, onions and tomatoes represent just 27% of the Canadian diet of fresh vegetables, a decrease of 9% compared to 2005 numbers. On the other hand, we’re apparently eating three times more sweet potatoes now compared to 20 years ago. Wonder if that’s entirely due to the growing popularity of sweet potato fries . . .

The editors of Consumer Reports Healthasked: “How exactly are you supposed to get healthy produce servings into your life?” and then came up with these 30 great tips.   Continue reading “Thirty heart-healthy ways to love your veggies (and fruit!)” →