I have both high cholesterol and blood pressure and so I decided I had better find out what a healthy heart diet is and stick to it. I am not a doctor but I do know how to carry out research into any subject that interests me, and I have to say that prolonging my life in a healthy way gets my full attention.

Most authorities will tell you that a healthy heart diet consists of a wide variety of fruit and vegetables with little red meat. I have learned that this is not the whole story. Our ancient ancestors used to eat things that were available and in season. Their staples even included acorns. They used to leach the tannins out of them and once that had been done one could make a sort of flour to bake items with. I have seen a program on TV where an expert made a sort of porridge that was flavored with herbs gathered from the local area.

I do not propose to go that far but we really do need to think about what we are putting into our stomachs. There is a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains in our shops and supermarkets to choose from. This means that we should be capable of finding food items that will give us the variety of vitamins, minerals, roughage and whatever else our hearts , as well as bodies, need to remain healthy.

What about meat? I can hear you asking, well even if you didn’t, I would want to know. We hear that red meat is not too good for us but I believe that there is evidence to show that there are meat animals that can provide protein without too much of the bad fats we get warned about. Deer were once on the menu and venison is quite low in fat and cholesterol when compared to a steak from a deliberately fattened beef animal. Chickens and to an even greater extent, turkeys do not have so much fat on them either. Ducks and geese do contain more fat but the French seem to thrive on it saying that it is "good fat." I suspect that it may be the red wine they drink that helps as there is some evidence to show that it contains anti oxidants that are good for our hearts.

To sum up, our healthy heart diet should consist of as large a variety of different vegetables, fruit, seed, nuts, fish, poultry and meats as possible. For if we can manage to find this variation, it is less likely that we will suffer from eating too much of the wrong sorts of fat in beef, lamb etc.