Heart Healthy Vegetables That Will Help You Live Longer: Beets, Artichokes and More!

Mom was right all along: Eat your veggies — your heart health depends on it!

Vegetables are packed with loads of nutrients vital to prevent heart disease and even boost your cardiorespiratory fitness to increase the body’s ability to use oxygen for exercise.

Here are five heart healthy veggies.

Loaded with lycopene, tomatoes are a strong antioxidant food that improves blood pressure and flow and can reduce the size of the plaque build-up in arteries that can trigger a heart attack. The effects of lycopene are enhanced when tomatoes are cooked and eaten with a fat, such as a pasta sauce made with olive oil.

Eating one cup of spinach, arugula, broccoli, kale or other leafy greens can lower your risk of heart disease, studies have shown. They are a great source of nitrate, which lowers blood pressure and boosts blood flow, along with folate and vitamins A, C, E and K.

The tasty root vegetable is loaded with fiber, minerals and antioxidants and is particularly high in nitrate. Researchers reveal beet juice can even lower blood pressure.

Popular in Mediterranean diets, artichokes are crammed with the highest number of antioxidants of any veggie other than beans, studies show. They also contain fiber — and research shows artichokes can lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels too!

These delicious green spears contain asparaptine, a compound that can improve blood flow and help lower blood pressure. They also have a diuretic effect that helps the body get rid of excess sodium to help lower blood pressure.