If heart disease, cancer or diabetes runs in your family, learning how to tailor your diet to prevent the condition you want to target can increase your longevity.

Everyone can benefit from eating a health-promoting diet that's rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, lean meats and fish, and low in saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, salt and added sugars.

"In fact, it's estimated that following that core diet, combined with exercising moderately for 30 to 60 minutes daily and avoiding harmful substances such as tobacco, could prevent 80 percent of all heart disease, up to 90 percent of all diabetes and as much as 60 percent of all cancers," says David L. Katz, M.D., director and cofounder of the Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine in Derby, Conn., and author of Dr. David Katz's Flavor-Full Diet.

However, if you have a family history of a chronic condition, you can gain added protective benefits by personalizing your diet to prevent specific diseases.

To simplify that task, here are three major health concerns and key food tactics to help stack the dietary deck in your favor.

Halt Heart Disease
What you eat and how you prepare food can strongly affect your heart disease risk. The following food prescriptions can help reduce your risk.

• Use olive or canola oil. These plant oils contain heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, which can reduce blood cholesterol when used instead of saturated and trans fats, such as butter, vegetable shortening, lard and partially hydrogenated oil. Both saturated fat and trans fat, which mimics saturated fat in the body, raise "bad" LDL cholesterol more than anything else in your diet.
• Use heart-smart bread spreads. If you already have high LDL cholesterol, Katz suggests using spreads such as Take Control, Smart Balance or Benecol instead of butter or margarine. These spreads contain ingredients that help reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol levels.
• Eat fish twice a week. Fish, especially cold-water fish such as salmon, albacore tuna, mackerel and herring, are rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce the rate for plaque buildup, decrease triglycerides and reduce blood pressure.

Defeat Diabetes
If diabetes runs in your family or you've been diagnosed with prediabetes, take action now by losing weight if you need to.

"Weight gain is the leading risk factor for diabetes," says Katz.

The quality of your diet can influence your risk for diabetes, too. To help maintain healthy blood-sugar levels, try these strategies:

• Seek out soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is effective in stabilizing blood glucose and insulin levels. It helps slow food absorption so your blood sugar doesn't routinely spike, which can stress the pancreas.

  "By eating a high-soluble-fiber diet, you won't need as much insulin," says Katz.

  Foods high in soluble fiber include oatmeal, beans, peas, lentils, barley, apples, bananas, strawberries, brown rice and whole-grain bread and cereal.

• Avoid highly processed foods. Conversely, foods made from refined starches and added sugar — including doughnuts, chips, cookies, cakes, pastries, crackers, white bread and granola bars — raise blood sugar and put a major demand on the pancreas. If your diet is filled with such foods, start substituting brown rice for white rice, for example, and whole-grain crackers and bread for regular.

Combat Cancer
If cancer runs in your family, a healthful plant-based diet, which emphasizes brightly colored fruits and vegetables, is your best bet for warding off this killer. But your strategies can be even more specific, depending on the type of cancer you're targeting.

• Eat plenty of low-fat or nonfat dairy products if colon cancer is your concern. Aim for 1,000 mg. of calcium a day — the equivalent of three 8-oz. glasses of skim milk.
• Consume plenty of whole grains. Besides soluble fiber, whole-grain foods, such as whole-wheat bread and bran cereals, also are good sources of insoluble fiber, the kind that speeds waste through the digestive tract.

  Plus, whole-grain breads and cereals, as well as beans, barley and lentils, are excellent sources of vitamins C, E and A — antioxidants that may help neutralize free radicals in blood, which have been associated with an increased risk for cancer.

• Limit alcohol. The American Cancer Society advises moderate alcohol consumption — no more than one drink a day for women and two a day for men — because a higher intake has been associated with an increased risk for breast and colon cancer, as well as a host of other conditions.

  "Moderate alcohol intake may reduce your risk for heart disease, which is something to consider if you have heart disease in your family," says Katz. "But if you have a family history of breast or colon cancer, you'd be well-advised to avoid alcohol altogether."

Finally, eat reasonable portion sizes of even healthful foods. Too much good-for-you foods can cause weight gain, which can hurt your heart and raise your risk for diabetes and some cancers.

Put Up a Food Fight

• For more information about how your diet can reduce your risk for diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association's Web site, www.diabetes.org. The ADA 's own food pyramid, the Diabetes Food Pyramid, can be accessed at www.diabetes.org/nutrition-and-recipes/
  nutrition/foodpyramid.jsp.
• For ideas on how to incorporate more fish into your diet to reduce your risk for heart disease, visit the National Fisheries Institute at www.aboutseafood.com. There you'll find recipes and cooking tips, as well as nutrition information.
• To learn more about the relationship between diet and cancer prevention, visit the American Institute for Cancer Research at www.aicr.org and click on the "Diet & Cancer" tab at the top. The AICR also offers a free online nutrition hotline that connects you with a registered dietitian, who specializes in diet and cancer, to answer specific questions.
• To personalize the USDA's food pyramid to determine exactly how much of each food group you should eat each day based on your age, gender and level of physical activity, log on to www.mypyramid.gov.

Sandra Gordon spoke with David L. Katz, M.D., director and cofounder of the Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine in Derby, Conn., and author of Dr. David Katz's Flavor-Full Diet, Rodale Books, 2007, $15.95.

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