DASH stands for a clinical study called Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It works by pumping up your fruit, vegetable, and low fat dairy intake while scaling down on meat, fish, and poultry. Other high fat and super sweet foods are also limited along with salt or sodium, which is especially important for those of you watching your blood pressure.

The DASH diet not only encourages life long healthy eating habits, but it throws in a smattering of health benefits. By upping consumption of fruits and veggies to 8-10 servings a day, you really pack in the phytochemicals and antioxidants. A phytochemical is a natural plant substance that is rich with nutrients and dietary fiber to help protect against many diseases. Antioxidants are nutrients that help the body by stopping damaging substances from causing harm within the body.

Is this a diet that can help me maintain or lose weight?

Certainly it can! Although the DASH diet was originally designed to control blood pressure rather than weight, with a few modifications, your weight goals will be a step or two away. Because fruits and vegetables are naturally lower in fat and calories than your common snack items, they really can fill you up without giving you those unwanted extra calories. The sample menus linked to this page provide great ideas for you to follow. If you want to lose weight though, you might want to visit the link "Ways to Lower Calories on the DASH Eating Plan" first. It will help you to make small changes to lower serving sizes. In addition, for those of you who are not as worried about your blood pressure, feel free to add salt to food and to disregard recipes that require specific low sodium ingredients.

Where do I start?

The great thing about the DASH diet is that you don't need to invest a lot of money in diet pills, books, or products. You don't need to spend all your time fixing hard to follow recipes or special foods for just you. This is a diet your whole family can participate in, and everything you will need is in your local grocery store.

Here are a few steps to help work you into the DASH plan gradually.

• Gradually increase your servings of fruits and vegetables to eight a day. Try including new ones at a meal or adding them as snacks. Keep in mind serving sizes of fruits and vegetables are not as big as you may think (i.e. ½ cup juice, 1 medium sized fruit, ½ cup cooked vegetables, or 1 cup raw, leafy vegetables).
• Go ahead and drink more milk and add more low or nonfat dairy products to your day. If lactose intolerance is a problem for you, try lactose free milk or take lactase pills. Refer to www.3aday.org for more information regarding lactose intolerance.
• Use food labels to choose products lower in saturated fat, total fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
• Keep in mind that processed foods contain large amounts of hidden sodium, fat, and/or cholesterol.
• Try using only half the butter, margarine or other condiments you use now.
• Cut down on your meat consumption, try one or two vegetarian meals a week.
• Use fruit as a substitute for a dessert.

The final tip to getting started would be to check out the links on this page. Start with "Following the Diet", it will help you get a better idea for what you can do today to start on the road to becoming a healthier you.

Helpful pages for the DASH Diet:

• Following the DASH Diet
• Comparing Food Labels
• Food Records
• Easy Tips to Lower Fat in Your Diet
• Sample Menus
• Simple Recipes for the DASH Diet
• Sodium Food Item Comparison
• Ways to Lower Calories on the DASH Diet
• Understanding Labels
• Facts about DASH from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute:www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/hbp/dash/new_dash.pdf

Weight Management