It’s not just about Valentine’s Day anymore

February is American Heart Month, as in that part of your body that pumps blood.  Heart Month is about heart health.  The only link to Valentine’s Day is chocolate, which has some some antioxidant-type health benefits.  You can participate in Heart Month:

* Wear a red dress

* Buy a red FitBit

* Send heart healthy Tweets

* Send an eCard

* Calculate your risk for a heart attack

* Share your story

* Learn about warning signs of a heart attack

* Learn how to prevent heart disease

A heart healthy diet is a key component of prevention.  But it’s interesting to review how the definition of ‘heart healthy’ has evolved over the years.  Back in the mid-20th century, when a dietary connection was first suspected, eggs were blamed for heart attacks because:

* eggs have cholesterol

* arterial plaque is made from cholesterol

* people who have heart attacks typically have elevated cholesterol

* therefore cholesterol causes heart attacks and eating less of it is a good thing.

Egg consumption plummeted.  Heart disease marched on.  Fat was blamed, particularly saturated fat.  We switched to margarine from saturated-fat butter. Heart disease marched on.  Someone noticed that the trans fats in hydrogenated margarine were linked to heart disease; trans fats were blamed.  Risk factors continued to pile up: excess body weight, sodium, sugar, lack of fiber, low intake of antioxidants and a sedentary lifestyle.

The American Heart Association is the arbiter of official recommendations on a heart healthy diet.  Right now, the recommendations have morphed into a Mediterranean-style diet, plant based, low fat, with little added sugar and extremely low sodium.  There’s also a recommendation to be physically active and maintain a normal weight.

Interestingly, the recommendations have drifted away from recommending or prohibiting specific foods.  There is no recommendation for a cholesterol-lowering diet, heavy on oatmeal, apples, beans and flax seed.  There is no prohibition of eggs.  Rather, the advice is to restrict saturated fat.  And nowhere is there a recommendation to eat more chocolate.

The diet is pretty sensible, but that hasn’t prevented controversy.  The new highly restrictive sodium recommendations are getting a lot of push-back from researchers and medical experts.  The continued obsession with “low fat” is getting a lot of pushback from consumers and medical experts.

Where do I stand on all this?

I think the continued harping on sodium intake misses the mark.  Potassium is extremely important for blood pressure regulation, yet we never hear about it.  Why?  My guess: food manufacturers and supplement makers can’t pump up the potassium in their processed products, so there’s no marketing advantage.  Potassium is naturally high in fruits and vegetables.  When people eat more of those,