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One Doctor's Prescription for a Healthy Heart

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Pictured Recipe: Quick Breakfast Tacos

Healthy Habits

At home on a weekend evening, Ades is bustling in the kitchen, cooking up a dish from a Sephardic cookbook written by a woman from his old Brooklyn neighborhood. His youngest child, Anika, a slim 15-year-old, and wife Deborah Rubin, M.D., a ­petite radiation oncologist, nibble on whole-grain crackers and hummus as Ades puts the finishing touches on the meal. The two older Ades children—22-year-old Jimmy and 24-year-old ­Rebecca—are away at college and working, respectively.

Ades brings a plate of grape leaves stuffed with lamb and brown rice to the table, along with a skillet of simmering Israeli couscous and fattoush, a Middle Eastern salad made with chopped greens, tomatoes, onions and grilled flatbread. Dessert is a moist almond cake that Rubin has made, substituting almond oil for the butter the recipe called for.

Ades admits that some people find him “extreme” about his diet—years ago he jettisoned butter from his home (he jokes that Anika doesn’t know what butter is) and stopped using mayo in his frequent tuna salad sandwiches. Butter and mayonnaise, Ades points out, are rich sources of the saturated fats that elevate levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), a.k.a. “bad” cholesterol. These, in turn, contribute to plaque buildup and narrowing of the vessels to the heart. Ades favors fish, poultry and vegetables over red meats and full-fiber whole grains over refined (see Step #6: Fill Up on Fiber). “If I go to a meeting and lunch is served, I’m not above taking the sandwich apart, throwing away the cheese, ditching the piece of bread with the butter or mayo on it, and eating it like that,” he says. “Yeah, people look at me funny. Too bad.” He counsels his patients not to keep butter in the house. “I realize that a teaspoon or so can be used to finish a dish and add flavor,” he says. “But I think if you have heart disease you should avoid the temptation.”

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