For most people, eating is one of life’s pleasures. We celebrate holidays and special occasions by sharing good food with the people we love. We mark birthday, weddings and even funerals with food. Sharing food with family and friends is often symbolic of comfort and love. Improving your diet and adopting a heart-healthy attitude toward food doesn’t mean giving up these things. In most cases, it means making some changes and thinking more deliberately about what your diet.

Take the Heart-Smart Challenge!

Ready to get started? It’ll be easy if you take on this challenge with your family and you invest the effort to make it fun. Here are some tips for getting started with your family:

• Once a day, sit down at the table together to eat a meal
• Once a week, take a recipe your family loves and modify it to make it healthier.

• Click here for easy ways to modify your favorite recipes.
• Be patient. It may take more than one try, but eventually you learn how to tweak recipes just right so the whole family loves the healthy version.
• Prefer not to cook? Click here for healthier restaurant options.

•  Once a month, take turns planning a healthy theme meal, based on types of cuisine or holidays, such as Italian night or Mardi Gras night.

• Research new recipes together online, make them heart-healthy if they're not already.
• Shop together for the ingredients.
• Consider inviting friends and forming teams to make it a cook-off challenge to prepare the best-tasting, heart-healthiest item on the menu.

Keep Going!