Improve Your Health: Eat Foods High in Essential Fatty Acids

Eating foods high in essential fatty acids can improve your health. Discover the top five foods you should be eating for a healthy lifestyle.

Did you know you could improve your health by eating foods high in essential fatty acids? Fatty acids provide many benefits for you and your body. Eating foods that are rich in fatty acids can reduce inflammation in your body, help prevent cancer cell growth, and reduce the risk of becoming obese, and these are just a few of the benefits of essential fatty acids.

To be sure and get these benefits, you need to be eating foods that are high in these fatty acids on a daily basis. You can easily do this by adding just five foods to your diet.

Foods in Essential Fatty Acids

#1-- Flax seeds --

2 Tbs contain 146% of the RDA for essential fatty acids. Flaxseeds are slightly larger than sesame seeds and have a nice nutty flavor. You can buy flaxseeds either whole or ground and sprinkle them on your food. Many people like them on their cereal, in muffin and bread recipes, sprinkled on their vegetables, or added to smoothies. If this does not sound appealing to you, you can buy flaxseed oil.

The benefits of fiber rich flaxseeds make up a long list. Just a few health benefits they offer are reducing hot flashes, lowering blood pressure, and lowering cholesterol.

#2 -- Walnuts --

1/4 cup contains 95% of the RDA. Walnuts improve your cardiovascular health by lowering high blood pressure and lowering cholesterol in people with Type II Diabetes.

#3 -- Salmon --

4 oz contains 87% of the RDA. For the highest levels of essential fatty acids, try to buy Chinook or Sockeye Salmon. In addition to being high in essential fats, Salmon protects your heart against arrhythmia.

#4 -- Cauliflower --

1 cup contains 9% of the RDA. Cauliflower contains compounds that may help protect you against cancer. In addition to having a high amount of essential fatty acids, the compounds in cauliflower also promote liver detoxification. These compounds signal your genes to increase production of enzymes to detoxify and cleanse your body and eliminate harmful toxins in your system.

#5 -- Cabbage --

1 cup contains 7% of the RDA. Like cauliflower, cabbage is another cruciferous vegetable that helps cleanse your body and provide heart healthy fatty acids.

Experts recommend for optimum health, consuming at least 2% of your total daily calories as essential fatty acids. For the average diet of 2000 calories, this means eating 4 grams per day.

By adding just flaxseeds and salmon to your diet, you can quickly reach your goal of 4 grams. Two tablespoons of flaxseeds has 3.5 grams of fatty acids, while a 4-ounce piece of salmon contains 1.5 grams.

Not only are these foods delicious, they are the most efficient way of including all of the essential fatty acids to your diet that you need. For improved health, begin adding these top five foods to your diet today.

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