Satchel Paige, the great ballplayer in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (with the Cleveland Indians in 1948), had a career that spanned five decades and launched him into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He had immense talent — and was smart about making nutritional choices that kept him healthy. One example of his advice: “Avoid fried foods, which angry up the blood.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! And new research out of China published in the journal Heart shows just how much fried food angers your body. The meta-study found every serving you eat per week ups your risk of coronary heart disease and major cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke, by 2-3 per cent. And folks who eat the most fried food every week are 28 per cent more likely to have an MCE than folks who eat the least amount.

This comes on the heels of another study from last year that was published in BMJ. Those researchers looked at more than 106,000 women ages 50 to 79 who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative to assess the impact of fried food on their health. Turned out eating fried food, especially fried chicken and fried fish or shellfish, is even more dangerous than the Chinese study indicates. This U.S.-based study says women who ate at least one serving a week of fried chicken had a 13 per cent higher risk of death from all causes and a 12 per cent higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease, compared to women who ate no fried chicken. And one serving of fried shellfish a week upped their risk of cardiovascular death by 13 per cent.

But heart disease is not the only health hazard associated with fried foods. There are epidemiological studies that show that eating it regularly contributes substantially to the development of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Clearly, if you eat fried foods every day, week after week, you’re not likely to make it around all the bases before being called out.

Many Americans eat fried food daily. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, between 2013 and 2016, about 37 per cent of American adults consumed fast food on any given day — and most of it is fried. And kids are loading up on it too. A 2016 survey by the Rudd Center at the University of Connecticut found 91 per cent of responding parents bought fast-food lunch or dinner for their child in the previous week.

Now is as good a time as any to ditch French fries, fried chicken, fried shrimp and even those onion rings. “But where’s the crunch you crave going to come from?” you ask. Easy. There are endless delicious chicken and fish dishes that can be made with healthy oils that are prepared by baking or broiling. You might even expand your palate and try a bunch of new foods that offer exciting flavours while they boost your heart health, increase your longevity and make you feel better.

In the “What to Eat When Cookbook” there are recipes for BBQ Atlantic Char, Roasted Chicken with Orange and Urfa Pepper (that’s smoky, sweet Turkish pepper), Wild Sockeye Salmon en Papillote, and Braised Mustard Chicken that will give you every bit of that marvellous mouth feel and flavour you want. Plus, the nutrition in these recipes is a gift to your well-being. The char, for example, contains 281 calories, almost 40 g of protein, 7 g of healthy fats, as well as 773 mg of potassium, 41 mg of magnesium and 640 mg of calcium. But if you find you’re going to a drive-thru, make smart choices, like Chick-fil-A’s eight-piece grilled chicken nuggets with 130 calories and 25 grams of protein or half a Wendy’s Apple Pecan Chicken Salad with 340 calories and 24 grams of protein. It’ll make you feel good when you don’t angry up your body!

-MICHAEL ROIZEN, M.D., AND MEHMET OZ, M.D.