HEART HEALTHY FOODS 3 PacePARTHEALTHYFOODS|s Heart-Healthy Shopping Made Simpler (NAPSA)—If you’re like the average shopper, you spend nearly three-quarters of an hour on each trip to the grocery. Many shoppers spend even moretime scrutinizing food labels and packages, studying ingredient lists and labels for low fat, low cholesterol items. In fact, eight out of ten Americans say they are seeking out these types of foods in order to reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke. Fortunately, heart-healthy shopping can be simpler than many people realize. According to dieticians, it helps to look for foods carrying the American Heart Association Food Certification Program’s heart-check mark. The foods bearing the Association’s red heart with the white check mark have been evaluated to ensure they meet the American Heart Association’s nutritional criteria and can be part of a heart-healthy diet for healthy people over the age of two. In order to carry the heart-check mark, a single serving of a food product must: * be low fat (less than or equal to 3 grams); * have low saturated fat (less than or equal to 1 gram); * have low cholesterol (less than or equal to 20 milligrams); * have a sodium value of less than or equal to 480 milligrams for individual foods; and * contain at least 10 percent of the Daily Value of one or more of these nutrients: protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron or dietary fiber. Checkit out. A check mark on certain foods from the American Heart Association means they are heart-healthy. Meats must meet the USDA’s standardsfor extra lean. The heart-check mark is a convenient grocery shopping tool because you can see the information on food products when you're making your purchasing decision. Amid the dizzying array of food healthy claims, you can rely on the American Heart Association’s heart-check mark. Shoppers can be confident because the information comes from what many consider the public’s most reliable source of nutrition information, the American Heart Association. For more information on diet and nutrition, visit www.american heart.org or call toll free (800) AHA-USAI and ask for a free copy of the Shop Smart With Heart brochure. For a complete list of certified products, visit www.american heart.org/foodcertification.
