Western vs. Mediterranean

List for heart healthy foods is small

A list of heart-healthy foods is out and it's a short one.

The diet comes from new analysis of nearly 200 studies involving millions of people.

The heart-healthy foods includes - no surprise here - vegetables, nuts, mono-unsaturated fatty acids found in olive oil, a Mediterranean diet rich in legumes, whole grains, cheese, yogurt, and fish.

The foods linked with heart disease are: trans -fat found in cookies and snack foods, high-glycemic foods like starchy white breads and a Western diet with a high intake of meat, butter, high-fat dairy, eggs, and refined grains.

A study author adds that it's really about one's overall eating pattern, rather than, as she puts it, "whether you ate a hot dog on opening day of baseball season."

The study appears in today's Archives of Internal Medicine. 

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