Whats the best food to eat for high blood pressure

High blood pressure can often be prevented or reduced by eating healthily, maintaining a healthy weight, taking regular exercise, drinking alcohol in moderation and not smoking.

Healthy diet

Cut down on the amount of salt in your food and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. 

The Eatwell Guide highlights the different types of food that make up our diet, and shows the proportions we should eat them in to have a well-balanced and healthy diet.

Salt raises your blood pressure. The more salt you eat, the higher your blood pressure. Aim to eat less than 6g (0.2oz) of salt a day, which is about a teaspoonful.

Find out how to cut down on salt

Eating a low-fat diet that includes lots of fibre, such as wholegrain rice, bread and pasta, and plenty of fruit and vegetables also helps lower blood pressure.

Aim to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day.

Find out how to get your 5 A Day

Limit your alcohol intake

Regularly drinking too much alcohol can raise your blood pressure over time.

Staying within the recommended levels is the best way to reduce your risk of developing high blood pressure:

  • men and women are advised not to regularly drink more than 14 units a week
  • spread your drinking over 3 days or more if you drink as much as 14 units a week

Find out how many units are in your favourite drink and get tips on cutting down.

Alcohol is also high in calories, which will make you gain weight and can further increase your blood pressure.

Lose weight

Being overweight forces your heart to work harder to pump blood around your body, which can raise your blood pressure.

Find out if you need to lose weight with the BMI healthy weight calculator

If you do need to lose some weight, it's worth remembering that just losing a few pounds will make a big difference to your blood pressure and overall health.

Get advice on losing weight safely

Get active

Being active and taking regular exercise lowers blood pressure by keeping your heart and blood vessels in good condition.

Regular exercise can also help you lose weight, which will also help lower your blood pressure.

Adults should do at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as cycling or fast walking, every week.

Physical activity can include anything from sport to walking and gardening.

Cut down on caffeine

Drinking more than 4 cups of coffee a day may increase your blood pressure. 

If you're a big fan of coffee, tea or other caffeine-rich drinks, such as cola and some energy drinks, consider cutting down.

It's fine to drink tea and coffee as part of a balanced diet, but it's important that these drinks are not your main or only source of fluid.

Stop smoking

Smoking does not directly cause high blood pressure, but it puts you at much higher risk of a heart attack and stroke.

Smoking, like high blood pressure, will cause your arteries to narrow.

If you smoke and have high blood pressure, your arteries will narrow much more quickly, and your risk of heart or lung disease in the future is dramatically increased.

Get help to stop smoking

Page last reviewed: 23 October 2019
Next review due: 23 October 2022

Whats the best food to eat for high blood pressure

10 tips for using diet to control blood pressure.

Fiddling with diet to control cholesterol makes perfect sense. After all, some of the cholesterol that ends up in arteries starts out in food. Changing your diet to control blood pressure doesn't seem quite so straightforward. Yet food can have a direct and sometimes dramatic effect on blood pressure.

Salt certainly plays a role. But there is far more to a blood pressure–friendly diet than minimizing salt intake. Fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy foods, beans, nuts, whole-grain carbohydrates, and unsaturated fats also have healthful effects on blood pressure.

There isn't a single "magic" food in this list. Instead, it's the foundation for an all-around healthful eating strategy that is good for blood pressure and so much more. Rigorous trials show that eating strategies such as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, DASH variants like the OmniHeart diet, and Mediterranean-type diets lower blood pressure in people with hypertension (high blood pressure) and those headed in that direction. They also help prevent some of the feared consequences of high blood pressure.

Why bother?

Hypertension is the ultimate stealth condition. You'd never know you have it without having your blood pressure measured — or until high blood pressure begins to damage vital organs.

Half of the 65 million American adults with high blood pressure don't have it under control. That's worrisome given the insidious consequences of high blood pressure. It is the leading cause of stroke in the United States. It contributes to thousands of heart attacks. It overworks heart muscle, leading to heart failure. It damages the kidneys, erodes sight, interferes with memory, puts a damper on sexual activity, and steals years of life.

Blood pressure categories

 

Systolic

 

Diastolic

Normal (optimal)

<120

and

<80

Elevated

120-129

and

<80

Stage 1

Hypertension

Stage 2 Hypertension

130-139


≥140

or

or

80-89

≥90

10 tips

Drugs that lower blood pressure tend to work well. But they don't necessarily attack the cause of the problem. And no matter how safe they are, all drugs can have some unwanted or unintended side effects.

A healthful diet is an effective first-line defense for preventing high blood pressure. It is an excellent initial treatment when blood pressure creeps into the unhealthy zone, and a perfect partner for medications. Unfortunately, translating the dietary strategies tested in clinical trials into diets for daily life hasn't been easy.

Here’s evidence-based advice about diet and blood pressure, complete with a weekly shopping list (see below):

  • Eat more fish, nuts, and legumes (beans).
  • Try to burn at least as many calories each day as you take in.
  • Turn to vegetables and fruits instead of sugary or salty snacks and desserts.
  • Select breads, pasta, and other carbohydrate-rich foods that are made from whole grains instead of highly refined white flour.
  • Eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juice.
  • Use unsaturated fats like olive, canola, soybean, peanut, corn, or safflower oils instead of butter, coconut oil, or palm-kernel oil.
  • Rely on fresh or frozen foods instead of canned and processed foods.
  • Choose low-sodium foods whenever possible; use herbs, spices, vinegar, and other low-sodium flavorings instead of salt.
  • Decrease your caloric intake if you need to lose weight.
  • If you need help, record everything that you eat day by day for a week. Have this information reviewed by a dietitian.

Weekly shopping list

As an aid for healthier eating, here’s a sample weekly shopping list.

Type of food

Servings per week

Amount to buy for a week

Leafy salad greens (lettuce, spinach, etc.)

4

1–2 heads or bags

Other greens (kale, chard, etc.)

4

1–2 bunches

Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower

3

1–2 heads

Tomatoes, carrots, peppers, avocados, eggplant, and other colorful vegetables

15

8–12 items

Celery, green beans, peas

3

1/2 pound

Fresh fruit (apples, pears, grapes, bananas, peaches, oranges, etc.)

20

15–20 items

Dried fruit (raisins, prunes, dates, etc.)

8

1/2 pound

Tomato sauce, paste, juice

4

2 jars or cans

Fruit juice

4

1 quart

Fish, shellfish

2

1 pound

Chicken, turkey

2

1 pound

Red meat (limit cold cuts, sausage, other processed meats)

1

1/4 pound

Eggs

3

3 large

Dried beans

3

1 pound

Breakfast cereal (preferably whole grain)

2

1 1/2–2 cups

Pasta, rice, grains

3

1/2 to 1 cup (dry)

Low-fat or skim milk

10

1/2 gallon

Yogurt

3

3 cups

Cheese

4

1/4 pound

Nuts

10

1/2 pound

Olives

2

1/4 to 1/2 pound

Baked goods (whole-grain bread, rolls, waffles, etc.)

20

1 1/2 pounds

Popcorn, pretzels, chips

3

4 1/2 ounces

Chocolate

1

7 ounces

Cooking oils

12

3/4 cup

Table fat (olive oil, oil-based spread)

16

1/3 cup

Salad dressings and mayonnaise

21

1/2 cup

Sugars

24

1/2 cup

Desserts

1

1/2 cup

Salt

7

2 1/3 tsp