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If you have recently seen your doctor to get the results of your cholesterol blood test, then you probably have some valid concerns about your diet, the role cholesterol plays in this diet, and have lots of questions about which foods lower cholesterol and how you can adapt your recipes to a low cholesterol diet.

Now, eating a healthy diet needn’t be as complicated as you may think. Basically it should be a diet that is rich in 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 being the worst cholesterol offenders.

For your recipes and your cooking, you need to try to add as many low cholesterol foods as you can, while you also work on lowering the volume of high cholesterol foods.

The result will be a lowering of the risk that you have for strokes and heart attacks.

The protein that these foods provide is vital for the health of your internal organs, and for building strong muscles and tendons, as well as maintaining bones, hair, blood and skin. So, by some means you still need to get this protein in your daily foods, but it shouldn’t be from high cholesterol foods available. Seafood can also supply your diet with protein, and seafood is a good source too, especially salmon, sardines and herring which contain the omega 3 fatty acids that your body also requires.

Milk too has protein, but since it is an animal product it too has fat so you need to drink skim milk, or 1% milk instead of whole milk or 2%. If your room mates are used to drinking the higher fat milk, you may get some complaints begin with, but in time, if you continue with the healthier choices, they will probably come to accept it.

Instead of cooking with butter (animal product), try using olive oil (plant product) instead, in particular the virgin olive oil which is processed less than the light olive oils. In fact the light olive oil refers to the color, and not the number of calories it contains – very misleading when we are used to light meaning fewer calories.

One way of reducing fat in baking is to use mashed bananas, apple sauce or pureed prunes instead of the fat, and this also gives you more fruit in your diet too.

Almonds, walnuts, peanuts and some other nuts are good for you when you are worried about your cholesterol, but make sure you only eat a handful a day, or you will be consuming too many calories which is generally not a good idea.

When you are making hamburgers, you can throw in some oats, as this is a good food to help you lower your cholesterol. Pulses are legumes as they are also called, or more commonly, dried beans, peas and lentils are also good foods to lower cholesterol containing soluble fibre, as do barley, pears and apples.

There are a lot more hints and tips about low cholesterol foods as well as cholesterol lowering foods and recipes here .

Tags: cholesterol, diet, foods, lower cholesterol

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.