A 7-Day Heart-Healthy Meal Plan
General guidance, not medical advice. Heart health is a clinical matter — food is one factor among several, and treatment decisions belong with your doctor. Full disclaimer.
“Eat less salt” is useless advice without numbers. Sodium hides in bread, cheese, sauces and anything from a package — most people have no idea what a day of their meals adds up to, which makes a target like 1,500 mg a day impossible to steer by.
This guide is a complete 7-day example week built from real recipes in the Plate Planner library, with the numbers shown. Every dish below carries under 500 mg of sodium per serving (per-serving estimates) and under 5 g of saturated fat, verified against USDA nutrition data. Tap any dish for its full ingredients, method and complete nutrition.
Sodium (Na) is a per-serving estimate from each recipe’s nutrition panel; saturated fat is verified against USDA data. Tap any dish for the full recipe and complete nutrition.
Day 1
Day 2
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Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Two different bars guard this week, and they’re not the same kind of number — worth being straight about. Saturated fat is verified against a USDA-derived nutrition database, the same verified-or-absent rule the low-cholesterol pages use. Sodium is a per-serving estimate from each recipe’s nutrition panel: good enough to steer a week by, not a lab measurement — which is why each day’s total is shown against the cap, where estimate error washes out across three meals.
The 1,500 mg daily sodium figure is the common heart-healthy target (and the planner’s default cap). Plenty of clinicians set 2,000–2,300 mg instead — use the number yours gives you.
Cooking at home is most of the battle. Roughly 70% of dietary sodium comes from processed and restaurant food, not the salt shaker — a home-cooked week like this one is already a sodium intervention before you change a single habit.
Replace salt’s job, don’t just remove it. Acid (lemon, vinegar), herbs, spices, garlic and chili do the work salt was doing; every dish in this plan seasons that way. And your palate genuinely recalibrates — after two or three weeks at lower sodium, the old amounts taste too salty.
On the fat side, the swap is simple and worth repeating: olive oil over butter, fish and poultry over fatty red meat, and whole grains, legumes and vegetables carrying the bulk of the plate.
In the planner, turn on the heart-healthy profile: every generated meal minimises sodium and saturated fat, every meal and day shows its sodium against your cap (1,500 mg by default, adjustable to your care team’s number), and any meal that blows the budget gets a one-tap lower-sodium swap. Free, no account needed to start.
No. It’s an example week built from recipes with per-serving numbers shown — organizational help, not medical advice. Blood-pressure and heart-disease management, including medication, belongs with your doctor.
A double bar: under 500 mg sodium per serving (a per-serving estimate) and under 5 g saturated fat (verified against USDA data). Estimates and verified values are labelled as what they are — the two aren’t blurred together.
It’s the commonly cited heart-healthy ideal and the planner’s default cap, but targets of 2,000–2,300 mg are also widely used. Your own number depends on your blood pressure, conditions and medications — ask your care team, then set the planner’s cap to match.
Yes — profiles stack. Heart-healthy pairs naturally with the low-cholesterol and diabetes-friendly profiles, and with household members’ needs; every dish is planned to suit the whole table.