Are you a hearty eater? No, I'm not talking about a hardy eater; eating robust meals (for some reason beef stew comes to mind) and washing them down with pints of lager. What I'm actually wondering is if your diet is good for your heart. We've all heard plenty about the importance of cutting bad fats from your diet to ensure heart health, but did you know that cutting back on carbs can also help? This is clearly the case, says a study out of the University of California at Davis.

Researchers found that cutting your carb intake to be less than 40 percent of total calories actually turned off a particular triglyceride-producing gene. As a matter of fact, they found that the more carbs were slashed from a person's diet, the less active this gene (known as stearoyl-coenzyme A desaurase) became.

This doesn't mean that it's time to go back to an Atkin's philosophy; rather, it simply means that being aware of carb intake is crucial for a well-balanced diet. Of all the macronutrients we get from food, carbs seem to be the easiest to source, which is also why it's so easy to go overboard with them. The most sound approach, based on current research, is to stick to heart healthy whole grains, legumes, and fruits and vegetables as your carb sources.