High Cholesterol Foods to Avoid for a Healthy Heart

If you are worried about or have been diagnosed with high cholesterol the first thing you will need to do is make some changes to your diet. What may come as a surprise is what doctors and nutritionists are recommending when it comes to lowering your cholesterol through diet. Medical research has shown that just because a food is high in cholesterol it does not necessarily translate to high blood cholesterol levels.

Cholesterol is a waxy substance found only in animal food products that include red meat, fish, eggs, poultry, and dairy products. Foods from plant sources do not contain cholesterol although there are plants such as avocados that contain large amounts of fat. This is where many people make the mistake of thinking that if they cut back on or avoid animal food products they can reduce their cholesterol levels.

What you need to understand is that eating saturated fat has a far greater influence on blood cholesterol levels, particularly the bad low density lipoproteins (LDL). LDL levels rise two percent for every one percent rise in caloric intake provided by saturated fats. This also works the other way with a two percent decrease in LDL levels when you decrease your intake of saturated fats one percent.

Doctors and medical researchers now know that it is far more important to reduce saturated fat intake then it is to avoid high cholesterol foods when it comes lowering blood LDL levels. But eating high cholesterol foods should still be done in moderation because it can still affect your cardiovascular health.

The way we prepare and serve foods is one of the reasons for the confusion around how they can raise LDL cholesterol. If we look at the standard bacon and egg breakfast we can see what happens. Eggs have gotten a bad reputation because of their high cholesterol content but if you eat just an egg it has little effect on your blood levels. Add some bacon or sausage to the picture, which both are high in saturated fat, and your LDL levels will begin to rise.

One of the worst culprits in the fight against high LDL cholesterol is deep fried fatty foods. Again, the foods themselves are relatively harmless until you breaded and lowered into that vat of hot oil. Some foods, such as fish, are beneficial to our health because they contain omega-3 fatty acids, which are shown to reduce LDL levels. Those benefits are lost when they are deep fried when they are deep fried, raising their saturated fat level.

There are many high cholesterol foods to avoid but doing so may not have the desired affect if you do not cut back on your intake saturated fat. It can have a far more detrimental effect on blood cholesterol levels then many people once thought.

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