Eat your vegetables — your heart health may depend on it.
Like fruit, vegetables provide important nutrients to prevent heart disease and may even boost cardiorespiratory fitness — the body’s ability to supply and use oxygen for exercise.
Eating lots of vegetables may be as good for the heart as taking 4,000 more steps every day, according to a 2023 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
Cardiologists aren’t surprised.
“A diet high in vegetables is very heart healthy for several reasons. One, it might actually replace other bad stuff people eat — if you have more vegetables, maybe you’re not eating garbage,” Dr. Marc Eisenberg, a clinical cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, tells TODAY.com.
People who consume more fruits and vegetables have fewer heart attacks and strokes, adds Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.
How do vegetables affect the heart?
Diets high in fruits and vegetables are beneficial for blood pressure, cholesterol and weight maintenance, says Dr. Sean Heffron, a cardiologist in the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at NYU Langone Health in New York.
That may be due to the antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals (compounds plants produce for their own protection), plus other mechanisms not yet understood, he adds.
“Everybody tries to pull out all the various important chemicals from fruits and vegetables and create supplements, but they never do as well as the original,” Freeman says. “That’s because of the matrix that the fruit or vegetable comes in is really healthful.”
The fiber in vegetables binds to cholesterol in the gut so it doesn’t go back into circulation, Heffron says, thus helping reduce total and LDL cholesterol, studies have found.
Eating more fiber also leads gut bacteria to produce compounds that lower blood pressure, researchers reported in April 2024 in the journal Hypertension.
Which vegetable is best for the heart?
All vegetables are good for you, the American Heart Association says. It recommends eating 4.5 cups of veggies every day. Choosing lots of colors — yellow squash, green beans, red peppers — means you get lots of nutrients.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute lists vegetables such as leafy greens — including spinach, collard greens, kale and cabbage — plus broccoli and carrots as a key part of a heart-healthy eating plan.
The cardiologists say they try to eat a variety of options. They listed these vegetables as some of their heart-healthy favorites:
Leafy greens
Eating one cup of green leafy vegetables per day may lower the risk of heart disease, according to a 2021 study in the European Journal of Epidemiology.
That’s because they’re a major dietary source of nitrate, a phytochemical in vegetables that lowers blood pressure and improves endothelial function, or blood flow, researchers note.
Green leafy vegetables are also packed with antioxidants, Eisenberg notes. They’re rich in vitamins A, C, E and K, and supply folate, a B vitamin that promotes heart health, according to the USDA Agricultural Research Service.
“I do try to get in as many green leafy vegetables as I possibly can,” Freeman says. “That can be spinach, arugula, kale or broccoli.”
He likes to have a big salad bowl for lunch filled with a mixture of different greens.
Greens can also easily be incorporated into smoothies or sauces, Heffron adds. He likes boiling, then pureeing broccoli or spinach and making a pesto out of that mixture.
Beets
This crimson root vegetable is another rich source of antioxidants, fiber and minerals. Beets are also particularly high in nitrate, and their juice has been shown to lower blood pressure.
How does it work? After a person consumes nitrate, the body converts it to nitric oxide, which opens blood vessels and promotes blood flow, resulting in less pressure in the arteries, says registered dietitian Natalie Rizzo, the nutrition editor for TODAY.
“Of all the nutritional data, I find personally some of those data most compelling,” Heffron says. “Beets are something I recommend to people.”
He likes to roast beets, cool them and put them in a smoothie with banana and strawberries. Other recipes to try are a citrus-beet salad and a roasted beet-yogurt dip with honey.
Beet greens can be sautéed and are delicious on their own.
Overall, beets are a “really powerful” natural way to lower blood pressure, Freeman says.
“The only caution I would give is that if you consume beets, it may make your urine and stool red, which makes people panic sometimes,” he adds.
Artichokes
They’re popular in the Mediterranean region, and are one of Eisenberg’s and Heffron’s favorite vegetables.
Artichokes contain the most antioxidants of any vegetable, except beans, a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found. Antioxidants circulate in the body and correct all the damage people accumulate just by living and breathing oxygen, Freeman notes.
When people took artichoke leaf extract supplements, it resulted in a “significant reduction” of blood pressure, a review of studies found. It also led to lower total and LDL cholesterol, a separate review found.
Artichokes have so much fiber and antioxidants that they should be considered a superfood, registered dietitian Theresa Gentile previously told TODAY.com.
Asparagus
Asparagus contains asparaptine, a compound that may improve blood flow and help lower blood pressure, registered dietitian Grace Derocha previously told TODAY.com.
One of Eisenberg’s and Heffron’s favorite vegetables, asparagus also has a diuretic effect, which helps the body get rid of excess sodium and also lower blood pressure that way.
Tomatoes
Eisenberg likes tomatoes, which are prominent in the Mediterranean diet and rich in lycopene, a “potent antioxidant” that’s believed to have a protective effect on the cardiovascular system, studies have found.
It can improve blood pressure and blood flow, plus reduce the size of plaque that builds up in the arteries.
Lycopene is particularly well absorbed by the body when tomatoes are heated and eaten with a fat — in the form of cooked tomato sauce made with olive oil, for example.
Tomatoes are among vegetables linked with a lower risk of coronary heart disease in a review of studies analyzing the impact of diet on health.
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