Heart Food Festival shows the way

Press, 29 September 1988, Page 17

Heart Food Festival shows the way

YOUR FOOD STYLE

JANICE BREMER DIETITIAN

More to eat is always a happy message. “Eat to Beat” is the nutritional campaign to the National Heart Foundation; it promotes foods to beat heart disease. Any notion that eating healthily will leave you short of joy in eating will certainly be quashed by the “Heart Food Festival,” which began yesterday with a luncheon at Bellamys, in the Beehive. The main thrust of the Heart Food Festival is to inform us about the range of healthy foods available, and the importance of good diet for health. The identification of approved food products found in retail outlets and restaurants throughout the country will most expand our repertoire of foods to beat heart disease. Our real knowledge of commercially prepared food products and dishes is very limited. Mostly, we have no idea whether foods are too high in fat sugar or salt, or deliberately stripped of their fibre.

The Heart Foundation has set criteria for their health goals, and invited food manufacturers to promote products approved for their nutritional content, under the Heart Food Fesivial logo. It’s the seal of Heart Foundation approval. Individual food products are not actually endorsed by the Heart Foundation. But those food products demonstrating qualities of lower fat, lower salt, higher fibre, and no added sugar may participate in the festival, a Heart Foundation project. Being able to identify approved food products is not, however, the end of the good diet message. Nor does the festival logo mean that we may eat so labelled foods with absolute abandon and still be healthy. There is little point in having the odd "healthy” food if the rest of the time you eat pies and pastries, fried takeaways and icecream. All New Zealanders will do well to change to lower fat,

higher fibre, lower salt and lower sugar food products. But large numbers of people will have to go further than this. If you already have a high blood cholesterol level, or high blood pressure, or diabetes, or are overweight or exercise very little even some of the Food Festival Foods will not be suitable everyday food items. The food festival aims to influence the diet of all New Zealanders, and does not cover categories of health that require special nutritional interventions.

Fats The requirements of Heart Food Festival foods specify that meat and meat products, poultry and products should contain less than 8 per cent fat content by weight. This is an important specification as it identifies flesh meat products that will suit virtually all low-fat dies requirements, so long as you keep to moderate servings. However, although milk, yoghurts, and milk products (except cheeses) are required to contain less than 2 per cent fat,

cheese is apparently allowed to contain up to 20 per cent fat. Tiiis is a level too high for daily consumption if you have any risk factors for heart disease. Edam, camembert, brie, mozzarella, francette, and Pyrenees cheeses may have onethird less fat than some of the hard Cheddar cheeses, but 25 grams of these cheeses will still have saturated fat equivalent to 100 grams of lean meat. It is important to realise that polyunsaturated oils and margarines, although made from the “right” kind of fats (not too high in saturated fatty acids), should not be eaten to excess. Foods like nuts are also very concentrated in fats, and can be fattening when eaten to excess. There are probably not a lot of newly sugar-re-duced food products to be seen in the festival lineup. Fruit juices can carry the logo, but we can drink a lot of sugar too quickly if this is not adequately diluted.

Salt One of the most exciting food developments undertaken by manufacturers has been to meet the criteria for salt content in breads. Some of our favourite breads have been containing more than a % teaspoon of salt for 100 grams of bread (about three slices). Some breads available during the festival time, and hopefully afterwards, have been reduced to less than 70 per cent of this level. Let us show the bread companies that we like our bread with lower salt content. Support their change by checking the labels of the breads you buy in the next few weeks. Breads displaying the Heart Food Festival logo are not necessarily wholemeal. If the first ingredient on the ingredient listing is “wheatflour,” “flour” or "wheaten flour,” the bread probably has more white flour thap wholegrain — unless

there' is a long list of grain ingredients in the loaf. When we reduce the salt content of a very regular daily food item, like bread, we then make allowance for eating the odd “tasty” salty food occassionally, and we can still have a reasonably low salt diet. It is pleasing to see that some convenience foods will be promoted during the festival, meaning that their salt and fat levels are not too high. Watch out for soups, many varieties of cereals, and “vegetarian” products. New foods you might like to try include venison sausages, oat breads, many types of yoghurts, tempeh, tofu, goat meat, fresh pasta, quark cheeses, and other cultured milk products. The Heart Food Festival will run into October. It is worth checking on' the promotions for a good indication of which food products can help you toward a diet to beat heart and other slowly progressing diseases.