Heart-Healthy Choices
February is American Heart Association Month. As we all try to incorporate more heart-healthy choices at the meat counter into our diet this month, here is some helpful information to chew on!
A common misconception about a heart-healthy diet is that you can’t eat red meat. The American Heart Association recommends less than 30 % of a person’s daily calories come from fat and less than 10% from saturated fat. That means on a 2,000-calorie diet, a person should eat between 56 and 78 grams of fat and less than 16 grams of saturated fat per day. This guideline is for a healthy adult. Women should be on the lower end of that range and men, the upper.
There are a lot of heart-healthy choices that fall into that category. Knowing the right cuts and portions makes shopping for red meat easy! A standard size portion of meat is 3 oz., or roughly the size of a deck of playing cards. Keep in mind that most steaks are much larger than 3 oz., so you need to multiply the fat grams by the number of servings you are eating.
Buying lean cuts of meat and lean ground beef is much easier now than ever before. At the meat counter in your local Super 1 Foods, look for cuts of meat labeled round, tenderloin or sirloin. These tend to be the leanest meats available. When you see the word “loin” think “lean.” Ground beef labels are also very easy to read. They are labeled with two numbers, like 95/5. That means the ground beef is 95% lean and contains only 5 grams of fat per serving.
When you know the right cuts of meat and portion sizes, you can still enjoy red meat on a heart-healthy diet!
Published 01/30/09
