How Does Your Diet Stack Up?
Could red wine and dark chocolate really be key ingredients to a healthier heart?

Picture this: a meal that starts off with an appetizer of roasted garlic and olive oil spread, then a Caesar salad, salmon with fruit salsa atop bed a wilted spinach, a glass of Burgundy, and dark chocolate with almonds for dessert. Now imagine that such a delicious and decadent-sounding meal could reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Surprised? Not really, says a researcher who developed the ‘polymeal,’ a group of seven foods that when eaten daily can, statistics suggest, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and increase life expectancy.

Food First
The polymeal concept was developed by Oscar H. Franco, M.D., and colleagues and published in the British Medical Journal last year. Franco, a scientific researcher at Eramus Medical Center in Rotterham, The Netherlands, scoured recent medical literature to find foods and beverages that had some research muscle supporting their role in reducing heart disease or its risk factors. He and his team found, statistically, that the combined effect of seven items could conceivably lead to an overall reduction in cardiovascular events by 76 percent.

What foods make up the polymeals? Red wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic and almonds.