A healthy breakfast is always a good idea.
But here’s more good news: A bowl of bran flakes with strawberries on top for breakfast can lower your risk of heart disease.
That’s just a couple of the foods that a new study shows can cut risk.
Researchers are trying to cut through mixed study results surrounding these antioxidant compounds found in many plant-based foods. They have been studied to see if they protect the heart by reducing LDL “bad” cholesterol and also reducing inflammation, which can lead to heart disease.
By looking at three new databases from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, researchers have now examined the flavonoid content of foods. They then compared those foods and their flavonoid content to the results of food questionnaires from over 34,000 postmenopausal women who were participating in the Iowa Women’s Health Study.
What they were looking at were the amount of flavonoids in the diet and their association with heart disease and related deaths over a span of 16 years. The information available from the USDA database allowed them to look at flavonoids overall as a group, but also within seven different subclasses.
Three of those subclasses—anthocyanidins, flavanones, and flavones—were linked to a significantly lower risk of heart disease or blood vessel disease mortality. The reductions ranged from 10 percent for anthocyanidins and any heart-related mortality to 22 percent for flavanones and any related heart disease.
The researchers were able to pinpoint a variety of specific foods, as well, such as bran, grapefruit, pears, strawberries, red wine, apples, and my personal favorite—dark chocolate. Anthocyanidins are found in purplish-blue fruits, such as blueberries, blackberries, and plums, and also in red fruits and vegetables such as cranberries, raspberries, red potatoes and red radishes. Flavanones are found in citrus fruits and juices. For your flavones, you’ll want to include celery, lettuce, parsley, beets, and bell peppers, to name a few.
When it comes to whole foods—the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The many hundreds of health-promoting substances available in these fantastic foods perform a life-enhancing symphony in our body every time we enjoy them.
I recommend you always stick to a wide range of fruits and vegetables, aiming for as much color as you can pack into one day—as you can tell by the array of colors in the examples I gave you above! And the occasional heart-friendly dark chocolate treat is okay, as long as you aim for dark chocolate with at least 70 percent cocoa content.
