About Cholesterol

Reduce Cholesterol Article

Cholesterol High Foods

One of the unpleasant ironies of life is that the better the food tastes, the higher the chance that it contains a high level of cholesterol

Before choosing a delicious dish at your favorite fine dining restaurant, inquire of the server what cooking method was used in the preparation of the food. Make another menu selection if the food was prepared using such cooking methods as frying, pan-frying, basting or roasting. If you love cheese, eggs and bacon for breakfast, you better think twice.

And cakes, ice cream and steaks – they’re definitely on the high cholesterol food list. Having a high cholesterol level in your blood doesn’t require you to become a vegetarian, but it does mean that you must be serious about limiting your intake of high cholesterol foods.

Foods which are cholesterol high contain two major components – saturated fat and cholesterol. Most animal products contain saturated fats. Saturated fats elevated your LDL (bad) cholesterol levels. The risk of heart attacks increases with a higher level of LDL cholesterol in the blood.

If you reduce your saturated fat intake, your blood cholesterol level is likely to drop. Eliminating saturated fat from your diet will have no negative effect on your body, except in food flavor, since Your body will produce all needed cholesterol.

It is important to understand the importance of cholesterol-free foods in your diet, because the level of saturated fat which you consume in your daily diet is more important than the amount of cholesterol content in the foods you eat. It is not the cholesterol content of the food, but the saturated fat level which signals the liver to generate more LDL (bad) cholesterol. The liver generates four times more cholesterol than we receive from our food intake, which explains why saturated fat can be more dangerous than dietary cholesterol.

A good example is coconut oil. Coconut oil is cholesterol free, but contains highly saturated fat. The fat content causes the liver to generate more harmful cholesterol. In addition, saturated fat increases the triglyceride level and is a blood-thickening agent.

Seafood, on the other hand contains cholesterol, but also contains a protective fat known as ‘polyunsaturated fat”. This causes the liver to produce less of the LDL cholesterol and more of the good HDL cholesterol.

Keep these facts in mind when making healthy food selections. Rather than being concerned about removing high-cholesterol foods from your diet, concentrate instead on eliminating foods which contain a lot of saturated fats or triglycerides. High cholesterol foods are usually found in animal products, but are also present in prepared and highly processed foods. These ready-to-use foods are convenient and great time-savers, but usually contain both high cholesterol levels and large amounts of saturated fats. Finally, consider that while there may be medications which reduce cholesterol levels in the blood, they tend to cause some negative side effects. If you must take a cholesterol-lowering supplement, make sure it is clinically and scientifically proven to increase good cholesterol and lower the bad cholesterol at the same time, while producing no side effects.