If you have seen your doctor recently to get the results of your cholesterol blood test, then it’s probably because you have some valid concerns about your diet, the part cholesterol plays in this diet, and have lots of questions about which foods are able to lower your cholesterol and how you can change your cooking to a more cholesterol friendly diet.
Now, consuming a good diet can be very straight forward. Basically it should be a diet that contains lots of fresh fruits and vegetables (the healthy carbohydrates), and also protein from legumes (dried beans, peas and lentils), and meats or dairy products.
But this is where it starts getting a little difficult. Animal products, and this includes butter, meat, poultry, eggs and cheese, everything that comes from an animal contain cholesterol, with red meats, egg yolks and butter having the highest cholesterol levels.
For your cooking and recipes, you should try to add as many low cholesterol foods as you can, while you also work on lowering the volume of high cholesterol foods.
This will result in a lowering of the risk that you have for heart attacks and strokes.
The protein that these foods provide is very important for the health of your internal organs, and for building strong muscles and tendons, as well as maintaining blood, hair and bones. So, by some means you still need to get this protein in your daily foods, but it shouldn’t be from foods that are high in cholesterol available. Fish can also provide you with protein, and seafood is a good source too, especially sardines, salmon and herring which contain the omega 3 fatty acids that your body also needs.
Milk also contains protein, but because it is an animal product it too has fat so you need to drink skim milk, or 1% milk in place of whole milk or 2%. If your family is used to drinking the milk with higher fat levels, you may get some complaints initially, but in time, if you continue with the healthier choices, they will probably come to adjust to it.
Instead of cooking with butter (animal product), try using olive oil (plant product) instead, in particular the virgin olive oil which is less processed than the light olive oils. You should note that the light olive oil refers to the color, and not the number of calories it contains – very misleading since we usually use light meaning less calories.
One way of lowering the fat level in baking is to use apple sauce, pureed prunes, or mashed bananas instead of the fat, and this also increases your fruit in your diet too.
Nuts are good for you when you are concerned about your cholesterol, but make sure you only eat a handful a day, or you will be consuming too many calories which is never a good idea.
If you are making hamburgers, put in some oats, as this is a great food to help you lower your cholesterol. Pulses are legumes as they are also known, or more commonly, dried beans, peas and lentils are also good cholesterol lowering foods containing soluble fibre, as do barley, apples and pears.
There are a lot more hints and tips about foods with low cholesterol as well as low cholesterol recipes here .
Tags: cholesterol, Diet, foods, lower cholesterol
