If you have heart disease, or a doctor has told you you're at risk of it, the diet plan your own doctor or dietitian gives you comes first. This page sets out what public health bodies recommend, plus what one large trial in heart patients found, so you know what that advice is usually built on and where dates fit into it.
This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dietitian before changing your diet, especially if you take heart medicine.
What the NHS and WHO recommend
To lower the risk of coronary heart disease, the NHS recommends a low-fat, high-fibre diet with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (5 portions a day) and whole grains. It also says to keep salt to no more than 6g a day, about a teaspoonful, because too much salt increases blood pressure.
The WHO healthy diet fact sheet sets a lower salt limit for adults: less than 5 grams a day. It asks everyone over 10 to aim for at least 400 grams of fruit and vegetables and at least 25 grams of naturally occurring dietary fibre each day. Our page on fibre-rich foods goes into the fibre side in more detail.
What a balanced plate looks like
The NHS asks for plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, so build meals around vegetables such as kale, red cabbage, broccoli, spinach, green beans and garlic. Add a modest portion of protein such as skinless chicken, fish or lean meat, and bring in red beans, lentils and soybeans a few times a week. WHO says carbohydrates should come mainly from whole grains, vegetables, fruits and pulses, and it names oats, brown rice and wheat as whole grains. So swapping white bread for wholemeal, or white rice for brown, is an easy first change.
Fats: what to cut and what to keep
The NHS advises avoiding food high in saturated fat, because it raises the levels of bad cholesterol in your blood. Its list includes fatty cuts of meat, sausages, butter, ghee, lard, cream, hard cheese, cakes and biscuits, and foods that contain coconut or palm oil. Santan is high in saturated fat too: USDA FoodData Central lists raw coconut milk at 21.14 g of saturated fat per 100 g.
Fat isn't cut out altogether. The NHS says a balanced diet should still include unsaturated fats, found in oily fish, avocados, nuts and seeds, and sunflower, rapeseed, olive and vegetable oils. WHO also names canola and olive oils as better choices than saturated fat. Spices like ginger, cumin, turmeric and sumac add flavour, which makes it easier to cut back on salt and on salty condiments like soy sauce, fish sauce and stock cubes, as WHO suggests.
What a trial in heart patients found
The CORDIOPREV trial took 1,002 patients with established coronary heart disease at one hospital in Córdoba, Spain. They were randomly assigned to a Mediterranean diet or a low-fat diet (502 and 500 patients) and followed for 7 years. Major cardiovascular events (heart attack, revascularisation, ischaemic stroke, peripheral artery disease or cardiovascular death) occurred in 87 people in the Mediterranean group and 111 in the low-fat group. The authors concluded that, in patients who already had heart disease, the Mediterranean diet was better than the low-fat diet at preventing major cardiovascular events. The effect was clearer in men; among the 175 women, no difference was found between the two diets. It is one single-centre trial, so it adds to the evidence without settling every question.
Where dates fit
Fruit and nuts round out the plate. Apples, pears, oranges and berries are easy daily choices, and Kurma Medjool works well as a sweet snack with tea. Walnuts, peanuts, and dried figs and dried dates fit in the same way between meals.
Watch the portion with dates, though. According to USDA FoodData Central, 100 g of Medjool dates contains 277 kcal, 6.7 g of fibre, 66.47 g of total sugars and only 1 mg of sodium. So dates bring fibre and almost no salt, but a lot of sugar. The NHS advises avoiding too much sugar, because it raises your chance of developing diabetes, which in turn significantly increases the chance of coronary heart disease. A couple of dates is a snack; a bowlful is not. Our page on the natural sugars and minerals in dates has more on this.
None of this replaces your treatment
Food is one part of looking after your heart. The NHS also lists staying active, not smoking, keeping alcohol within limits and taking any prescribed medicine. It warns not to stop taking prescribed medicine without consulting a doctor first. For more general eating ideas, see what a healthy diet is made of.
References
- NHS. Coronary heart disease: prevention. Page last reviewed 17 January 2024.
- World Health Organization. Healthy diet (fact sheet), 26 January 2026.
- Delgado-Lista J, et al. Long-term secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet and a low-fat diet (CORDIOPREV): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2022;399(10338):1876-1885. PMID 35525255.
- USDA FoodData Central. Dates, medjool (FDC ID 168191).
- USDA FoodData Central. Nuts, coconut milk, raw (FDC ID 170172).