Diet :: Best way to protect heart is to follow a healthy diet

The best way to protect your heart is to follow a healthy diet and lifestyle and curb intake of trans fats, experts at the Health Essayists and Authors League (HEAL) and Diabetes Foundation (India) have opined.

“Excessive intake of trans fatty acids pose a risk for development of diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases (CVDs) in early 20’s and 30’s,” the experts said, adding, trans fats pose even greater health threat than saturated fats.

“We have demonstrated that 13-25 per cent of urban Indian adolescents have high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) contributed by intake of trans fatty acids, which would predispose them to early development of diabetes and CVDs,” Fortis Hospitals, New Delhi, Director and Department Head of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Anoop Mishra said.

Indeed, trans fatty acids are one of the strongest “diet poisons affecting human metabolism today,” Mishra said.

A comprehensive review of studies of trans fats, published in 2006 in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that there is a strong and reliable connection between trans fat consumption and coronary heart disease, Mishra said.

Trans fat, found in fast food products made with hydrogenated oil in an unregulated market is already a “time bomb” ticking to explode even as the U nion Health Ministry is contemplating for processed food manufacturers to list the trans fat content on nutrition labels.


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