Heart Foundation Australia

The six-egg limit was actually a pragmatic safety decision.

The researchers designed the intervention right up to the very edge of the Australian Heart Foundation's guidelines.

Oh, because of cholesterol.

Yes.

James Maringu has received funding from the Australian government via the NHMRC and MRFF for research and a fellowship relevant to rheumatic fever.

He has also received research funding from the Heart Foundation.

James is a secretary of the Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium, SAVVAC, echocardiography in Group A Strep Vaccine Trials Technical Advisory Working Group.

He has received funding from SAVVAC towards registration, accommodation, and travel for meeting attendances.

And you'll hear from a woman whose heart condition was nearly missed, but first, let's get into the updated guidelines.

Natalie Rafool is head of clinical strategy at the Heart Foundation.

Natalie, thanks for joining me.

Good morning.

Mm.

It's Life Matters here on ABC Radio National.

You're hearing from Professor, Associate Professor Sarah Zaman, an academic interventional cardiologist at Westmead, and also Natalie Raffoul from the Heart Foundation, and Mandy Hall, who has experienced this and is trying to spread the word on how, um, women should be paying attention to their heart symptoms and so should the rest of the health system.

You're telling me your stories too.

I'd eat a lot of packaged foods just because I never really liked cooking, and I found it was just easier to get something out of a box and heat it up, especially sometimes after school I'd always be really, really hungry.

One of my favorite snacks, I used to love just getting rice cakes and spreading some margarine on top of them and putting them in the microwave, and you know, it had the Heart Foundation tick of approval, so it's gotta be healthy, yeah? Um, and that ties in with many other foods like meat pies.

They, you know, had the heart tick of approval, so I ate a lot of them, though highly processed.

I ate the Milo cereal every now and then.

Make no mistake, this is an industry design-- uh, device designed by industry for industry, not with our health in mind.

And surely we can trust Heart Foundation Australia.

[laughing]

In 2023, the foundation affirmed that eating too much red meat increases your risk of heart disease.

And, "Overall, the limited body of evidence suggested that replacement of a moderate amount of poultry or fish with lean pork and beef can lead to improved cardiovascular risk outcomes." These answers seem to be at odds with the anti-red meat advice scattered throughout the foundation's website.

The foundation's heart-healthy eating pattern recommendation is built on eating plant-based foods.

Does this sound familiar? It's the same plant-biased Adventist advice sprouted by Sanitarium, the major sponsor to the Australian Heart Foundation.

I could be generous and declare that somehow the foundation missed this critical information in the Sax report, or I could surmise that the findings were at odds with their sponsorship deal with Sanitarium and so were conveniently ignored.

Not a lot of people know that.

And so making sure that a woman knows about, yeah, what exercise recommendations do the Heart Foundation have, for example, to reduce your risk? You know, can we talk about smoking? Can we talk about your alcohol intake? Again, let's talk about nutrition.

Then there's the bone health and I think we all remember osteoporosis is it's that silent disease, isn't it?

But I read that one in two women postmenopausal will break a bone.