Making DASH Diet Work for Your Family

If you have high blood pressure, your physician has probably recommended the DASH diet. And now you are wondering, how can I eat more healthfully, and still feed my family?

The DASH diet can be a family-friendly plan without much effort at all. The DASH Diet Action Plan has been designed to appeal to all family members. The 28-days of meal plans include foods that your kids are already eating, just with a stronger emphasis on the healthy foods. Have picky eaters? We have a chapter on how to get veggie-haters to be more adventurous. And the recipes are all kid-tested favorites.

The DASH diet is absolutely healthy for the whole family. It is recommended in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Heart Association. Family members who are at a healthy weight would just eat larger portions. Even though "diet" is in the name, in this case, "diet" refers to an eating plan, rather than specifically to weight loss.

Sneaking in some health benefits with the DASH diet will keep your kids healthy for the long run. High blood pressure is being seen more often in children today. Years of damage from high blood pressure can lead to earlier complications, such as kidney disease, stroke, heart disease, and heart failure.

In an article from the journal Pediatrics, published on-line on March 1, 2010, researchers reported on finding that early markers of heart disease were found in obese children (as young as 3 years old), as opposed to healthy weight children.

Published in the April, 2008, issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, an article entitled, The efficacy of a clinic-based behavioral nutrition intervention emphasizing a DASH-type diet for adolescents with elevated blood pressure, showed that teens who followed the DASH diet were able to lower their blood pressure, and improve their diets.

It's never too early to start eating more healthfully. Or to turn this around, why would you want to develop unhealthy habits at a young age. Learn more about the DASH diet (based on the research, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).

These books are the user-friendly (and family-friendly) guides to the DASH diet. These books were developed to make it simple to understand and put into practice.