Diet is vitally important to all aspects of your health, but it’s smart to pay a little extra attention to your heart. As the body’s engine, you certainly can’t live without it. And a troubled heart has a ripple effect on the wellbeing of your entire body. Heart disease is also often linked to other complaints like high blood pressure, endocarditis, and coronary artery disease. You will likely experience chronic fatigue, nausea, and dizziness.

What you might not know is that you must choose wild salmon, not farmed. Unfortunately, up to about 70% of the fish you’ll find at the grocery store is farmed, but it’s not at all equal to the wild version. Farmed fish is fed an unnatural diet full of antibiotics and food dyes to make the flesh look healthy. The salmon are also so crowded in their environment that they tend to consume each other’s waste.

So to head off heart disease before it can take hold, evaluate your diet and see if you can make some better choices. The following foods, in combination with regular exercise, are especially good for your ticker. You probably already know that fish is an important part of a heart-healthy diet. Wild salmon is an especially great choice because it is packed with omega-3 fatty acids. A diet rich in omega-3s has been found to improve the metabolic markers for heart disease. As a bonus, you’ll get a good deal of selenium, which is an antioxidant that protects the health of your entire cardiovascular system.