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I’ve been a cardiothoracic surgeon for more than 25 years. About four years ago, I myself suffered a heart attack. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how to effectively fuel my body and keep my heart healthy and strong.
The reasons to nourish your body (including your heart) are myriad, but for anyone looking to set themselves up for success each day should pay particular attention. In other words, putting care toward what you eat at every meal naturally translates to putting your best foot forward each day.
But it’s not always clear how to do this, and product labels only designed to make you buy something don’t always help. So when it comes to food, I often tell my patients “the longer the shelf life, the shorter your life.”
In most grocery stores, the perimeter is where produce and other things that will eventually spoil are generally stocked. The inner aisles are mainly ultra-processed foods that are engineered to be hyper-palatable and stripped of the valuable nutrients you actually need.
So I use what I call the 80/20 rule — 80% of my time is spent on the perimeter and 20% or less is spent in the inner aisles. Here’s how I use this strategy to buy groceries for my family each week.
I build my shopping cart around these essential items
I organize my list into five key sections: fruits, vegetables, fiber, protein and healthy fats.
For vegetables, I purchase broccoli, bell peppers, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, spinach and carrots. My favorite fruits to buy are cherries, blueberries, bananas, apples, strawberries, blackberries, mangos and oranges. Every morning, I make a smoothie with cherries, blueberries, almond butter, almond milk and protein powder.
To boost my fiber intake, I buy steel-cut or large-flake old-fashioned rolled oats, quinoa and lentils. I also make sure to get a variety of legumes — black, kidney, pinto, and Great Northern beans — and chia seeds for smoothies.
Fiber isn’t flashy, but it does two big jobs. It helps lower your ApoB — the cholesterol-carrying particles that penetrate your artery walls and start plaque formation. It also feeds your gut microbiome, which affects the health of every organ system in your body.
Protein is another important building block, because it maintains muscle mass and keeps you full, so you’re not reaching for the next thing an hour later. Every week I’m buying ground turkey, ground chicken, chicken breast, fish like wild salmon, wild cod, Greek yogurt and eggs. I tend to prioritize lean meats and poultry over red meat, because it helps me hit my protein goals without all the unhealthy saturated fats.
To get my fill of healthy fats, every week I buy extra virgin olive oil, cashews, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, avocado and the aforementioned cod and salmon for my fatty fish options. These support your heart, help calm inflammation and let your body absorb the fat-soluble vitamins it needs.
How I handle packaged and processed foods
A diet of ultra-processed foods is one of the biggest drivers of chronic disease today. Consistent consumption of them can increase your risk of Type-2 Diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. These items are designed to slip past your body’s fullness signals, which makes it easy to overeat and hard to stay metabolically healthy.
With that in mind, my family rarely buys hot dogs, deli meats, regular soda, white bread (we prefer sourdough), pastries, donuts, cakes and alcohol.
If you ever have a question about whether something processed is worth buying, my rule is to ignore the front of the package entirely. It’s a billboard built to sell you a story with words like “natural,” “low fat” or “enriched.” Flip to the back to get the full picture.
For me, the shorter the list of ingredients the better. The order also matters because the higher on the list it is, the more of the ingredient that the item contains. I also avoid anything with added sugars and preservatives.
The next time you head to the grocery store, my best advice is to walk in with a list and a plan, never shop hungry, prioritize whole foods and audit your cart before you check out. Take these steps and your heart will thank you.
Dr. Jeremy London, MD, is a board-certified cardiovascular surgeon with more than 25 years of clinical experience caring for patients across the full spectrum of heart disease. Dr. London received his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia and completed his general surgery residency at Joseph’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado. He completed a general vascular and thoracic surgical fellowship at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife, four pups, and three boys.
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