Cook Your Way To A Healthy Heart

The first steps to a healthy heart start with transforming your diet. This means incorporating healthier options like vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins on a regular basis. But who says eating healthy has to be plain, boring, and tasteless? There are plenty of cooking tips to pump up the nutrition and the flavor.

Click here to see the Cook Your Way to a Healthy Heart (Slideshow)

Registered Dietitian Sharon Palmer shared with us some of her heart healthy cooking tips inspired from the Mediterranean diet.

 "A strict, low-fat dietary strategy for heart disease prevention is old news," Palmer explained. "Today's emphasis is on a vibrant, flavorful diet that powers up on healthy fats, seasonal fruits and vegetables, whole grains, herbs, spices, and moderate alcohol consumption. There's nothing frightful about that portrait of a diet."

These cooking tips are not only heart-healthy and nutritional, but add bold flavor and spice to any meal. Palmer teaches us how to make vegetables delicious, experiment with whole grain, and how to make some of our favorite foods (like pizza) nutritious.

Follow these cooking tips and learn how you can incorporate good fats and other heart-healthy foods into your diet to help improve your heart and overall health. With these healthy cooking tips, you won't even realize that you are trying to cook healthy meals, just delicious ones. 

Emily Jacobs is the Recipe editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @EmilyRecipes.