8 Foods For Lowering Blood Pressure Slideshow
Spinach
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Potassium, magnesium, folate, and natural nitrates.
Easy Edibles: Throw this leafy green onto sandwiches, in your salads and pastas, or transform it into a pesto.
Try some of these spinach recipes.
Unsalted Pumpkin Seeds
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Magnesium.
Easy Edibles: Keep some around for midday snack attacks, toast and season (with salt-free spices) for an easy appetizer, or use them in place of pine nuts for that spinach pesto.
Potatoes (Purple)
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Potassium, magnesium, and anthocyanins (the compounds that give these violet spuds their color), which may also help lower blood pressure.
Easy Edibles: Bake your own heart-healthy french fries, make a mash or a hash, or throw a handful of tots into stews and curries.
Beans
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Magnesium, potassium, and a high fiber-to-protein ratio, which helps regulate blood sugar and lower blood cholesterol levels.
Easy Edibles: Make a black bean salad or white bean dip for that next potluck, throw them on top of a spinach salad or into your next homemade burrito wrap, or give garbanzos a quick bake in the oven for a crunchy topping or appetizer.
Mushrooms
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Iron, zinc, potassium, vitamin D, and lots of natural umami, which will please the palate so much that it won't miss the salt shaker.
Easy Edibles: Replace beef with these meaty vegetables. Make burgers out of large, grilled portobellos; fill tacos with spiced and sautéed creminis, trumpets, and chanterelles; and mix shiitakes with noodles or rice.
Dandelion Greens
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Magnesium, as well as a natural diuretic, meaning this leafy green kicks out extra sodium without draining you of potassium.
Easy Edibles: Make a fresh salad from the greens or use in a pesto.
Broccoli
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Fiber, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C.
Easy Edibles: With a quick steam and a chop, add these mini trees to your hash for some bright green color. Or of course, eat them whole and raw with that low blood-pressure bean dip.
Click here for broccoli recipes.
White Fish
Heart-Healthy Nutrients: Omega-3 fats, which serve as a natural blood thinner.
Easy Edibles: Whether you use a skillet, the grill, or the oven, fish cooks up quickly. And for a full meal, top that hash with some cod, trout, halibut, herring, or even fresh, grilled sardines.