February is National Heart Health month, and a great time to look at your habits to see how you can better take care of your heart and overall health.
The National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute (NHLBI) suggests a self-care routine that includes knowing your blood pressure numbers, relaxing, exercising, and of course - tasty, heart-healthy recipes.
A big focus of those heart-healthy recipes? Seafood! The American Heart Association has said that swapping out a higher-fat meat (like sausage or bacon) with non-fried seafood twice a week can have "a big impact on heart-healthiness," and plays a part in "preventing not just heart disease, but stroke, heart failure, sudden cardiac death and congestive heart failure." But heart health isn't the only benefit of seafood - it also supports your immune system and more.
The Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) outlines the key players that make seafoods so healthy:
"Seafood is a nutrient-packed food that reduces inflammation with vitamins A, B, and D, as well as omega-3 fatty acids and minerals such as calcium, selenium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, iodine, magnesium and potassium."
Plus, SNP gives calamari (squid) 3 out of 4 hearts for having between 500 and 1,000 mg of Omega-3s per portion.
Often when organizations tell us to eat more seafood, they leave calamari out of the conversation. As a wild-caught, sustainable seafood, that seems silly, doesn't it?
We think there's just one reason: most people think of calamari as a fried food. And of course it's really delicious fried, but the health value of calamari shouldn't be confused with the calorie count of frying.
To help get the right information out there, we created an eBook for you to download that outlines some of the health value of calamari, busting some of the myths and well-meaning misinformation we hear about calamari.
What's the bottom line? Calamari is great grilled, sautéed, roasted, - and yes, fried - and when cooked the right way, can fit into many different eating patterns, including Paleo, Keto, DASH, Mediterranean, Volumetrics, and even 2021's trendy Nordic Diet.
Ready to lean more? Download the eBook now!
