How To Make A Low Cholesterol Diet Taste Great

If you’re planning on going on a low cholesterol diet it can be a bit of a worry that you are going to be cutting out so many of the foods that you love. That’s the trouble with many diets – the stuff that is bad for you tends to be the stuff that you really like. But thankfully there are plenty of great and tasty options for you if you’ve decided to go low cholesterol in your diet. It is just about knowing where to look, and given that it’s sometimes hard, we’ve prepare d a list of delicious and nutritious low cholesterol options.

 

Instead of croutons, use walnuts

A salad is always healthy right? Well, the trouble is that while the main components of a salad are extremely healthy and good for you, many people like to add optional extras such as croutons which really push up the calories, fat and that nasty cholesterol we all want to avoid. So how about swapping them out of your salads for walnuts? Walnuts give that same crunch you’re looking for and also add a little more flavour and texture to the monotony of salad.

 

Drink wine, not cocktails

We all like to indulge sometimes and enjoy a little drinking. Maybe we’ll have a cocktail with dinner or maybe just when we want to relax. Unfortunately all the stray ingredients used in cocktails can be very bad for us. Depending on the cocktail you can see things used such as coconut cream, sugar syrup and other foodstuffs that are filled with cholesterol. So, next time you’re drinking you should make sure you drink wine instead. Red wine has one tenth of the carbohydrates that you will find in a single margarita. Now that’s food (or should that be drink?) for thought.

 

Try edamame beans and nut, not cheese and crackers

Who doesn’t like a bit of cheese and crackers? The problem is that as a snack it is completely brimming with cholesterol and therefore it needs to be avoided. Try eating nuts such as almonds or choosing edamame beans as your snack next time you feel a little peckish. It will do wonders for your waistline and you’ll be putting another foot forward in your quest to eradicate cholesterol.

 

Vinegar and lemon juice, not salad dressing

We’re back to salads again! Now that you’ve substituted those croutons for walnuts let’s take a look at the other problems (and this one is even bigger). You can make a salad as healthily as you like, but then throw it away in an instance by pouring on a gloopy salad dressing that is positively made of calories and virtually nothing else. The intense cholesterol-packed sauce will take your salad from a healthy meal and turn it into a nightmare. But help is on the way and it comes in the form of lemon juice and vinegar. This flavoursome duo adds a kick to your salad without the cholesterol.

 

Use margarine, not butter

Many of us love the creamy taste of butter on everything from toast to jacket potatoes to a topping for vegetables. But butter is packed with cholesterol and is clearly going to be naturally bad for you. So the best plan to swap it out and choose instead a spread with low levels of cholesterol. A great choice is a spread that is based around olive oil, but really any margarine will be an improvement on the cholesterol-heavy nature of butter. This is another great way to save on cholesterol and help to keep your healthy.

Categories: butter, cholesterol, cholesterol diet, cholesterol nbsp, drink wine, edamame beans, lemon juice, margarine, nbsp, salad, salad dressing

How to Lower Your Cholesterol without Compromising on Taste

You might want to take care of your wellbeing and cut cholesterol from your diet, but how do you do it and still enjoy your food? Does a low-cholesterol diet doesn’t have to be all oat bran and tofu? Of course not! There are plenty of simple substitutions you can make in your diet that bolster your wellness and still keep you in a state of foodie bliss.

1. Instead of sprinkling croutons, go for walnuts: In carbohydrates, such as croutons, you’ll find a lot of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as bad cholesterol. Walnuts, on the other hand, are high in polyunsaturated fat, which works to lower your LDL levels while giving your HDL levels (aka your levels of “good” cholesterol” a hearty boost. So the next time you have a salad, why not go a little bit nutty?

2. Replace cocktail hour with wine time: While research does suggest that a small amount of alcohol can cause your HDL cholesterol levels to rise slightly – which is a good thing – you won’t reap any benefits if you’re knocking back the mojitos and margaritas. Cocktails and mixed drinks with fruit juice contain carbohydrates which, as we’ve previously mentioned, is not great for your cholesterol levels. However, switching to red wine can give you all the benefits you could want for your wellbeing. Aside from having just 10% of the carbohydrate content of a margarita, red wine is packed with antioxidants known as flavonoids, which are believed to lower your LDL and boost your HDL. Still, alcohol can, in large quantities do real damage to your health – as I’m sure you’re aware – so stick to the American Heart Association’s guidelines of two glasses a day for men or one glass for women.

3. Swap cheese and crackers for edamame and nuts: Cheese and crackers are a popular pre- or post-dinner snack, but they are sky-high in saturated fat, which is one of the prime culprits behind high cholesterol. For all the foodie goodness of cheese and crackers but none of the guilt, try almonds and edamame. Almonds have been shown to lower LDL, while edamame – the boiled baby soybeans that are a common appetite whetter in Japanese restaurants – is extremely low in the saturated fat department. Although evidence is conflicting, some wellness experts assert that the soy protein found in edamame actively lowers your LDL. If you’re thinking Japanese soybeans sound a little complicated for an appetiser, all you need to do is buy them frozen, dump them into boiling water, and drain after 5 minutes.

4. Drizzle salads with balsamic vinegar: Any diet wellness or weight loss article you read will probably tell you to avoid salad dressing, or at least have it on the side. However, you don’t need to live a life of leafy dryness. Try drizzling your salads with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice or a nice shallot and grapefruit dressing.

5. Banish butter and bring out the margarine: There’s more than a third of your recommended daily value of saturated fat in just one tablespoon of butter (which, if you’re interested, is seven grams). Moreover, a single tablespoon of butter contains 10% of your daily value for dietary cholesterol. True, butter isn’t as harmful for your health as wellness experts once thought. However, it remains one of the main sources of high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, so switch your butter with a vegetable-oil-based spread. Anything containing olive oil will help you to replace a bad fat with a good fat. With that in mind, use olive oil (or white wine vinegar) when cooking instead of butter.

Categories: balsamic vinegar, butter, cholesterol, cholesterol levels, hdl cholesterol, high cholesterol, ldl cholesterol, levels, olive oil, Red Wine, Substitutions, wellness experts

Which Foods Should You Avoid to Lower Your Cholesterol?

You need cholesterol to produce hormones, and for your cell membranes to function, but not all cholesterol are created equal. With the right diet, you can get all the “good” HDL cholesterol you need, but certain foods contain “bad” LDL cholesterol, which increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. So which foods should you avoid?

 

While butter is a staple part of the British diet, it’s doing nothing for your weight or your wellbeing. We use butter for everything from cooking to making cakes, but just one teaspoon of the stuff will give you 10% of your recommended daily intake of cholesterol. According to American Heart Association, a healthy adult should consume no more than 300mg of cholesterol a day, but there is 215mg of cholesterol in your average 100g pack of butter.

 

In recent years, wellness experts seem to have been harking on about seafood, but that is not to say that all seafood is good for you. Some of your fishy friends are actually loaded with cholesterol, especially when the fish has been fried rather than boiled or grilled. Shrimp, in particular, is a high cholesterol food to avoid, as 100g of shrimp contains 195mg of cholesterol, or 65% daily value. If that’s a hard figure to get your head around, there’s roughly 4% of your daily allowed cholesterol intake in just one large shrimp.

 

Like seafood, chicken has been hailed by experts as a healthy alternative (and more environmentally friendly option) to red meat. However, while chicken is low in fat, the way you cook it makes a huge difference to how good it is for you. The secret to the cholesterol content of chicken lies in the skin, as this is what adds on the cholesterol points. In fact, just a single leg of chicken with the skin on contains more fat and cholesterol than a burger or a cup of ice cream.

 

But how much cholesterol is in burgers and ice cream? A big cheese burger, for example, has approximately has 175 mg of cholesterol, although this level is lower if you go for a plain burger instead. However, ice cream is packed with cholesterol. Everydayhealth.com notes, ‘Did you know that a single cup of ice cream has more fat than a hamburger and more cholesterol than 10 glazed doughnuts? Skip the scoop and try a cup of fresh fruit for dessert instead. Fruit is low in calories and high in the fibre, vitamins, and nutrients you really need; making it one of the best things you can eat for lower cholesterol.’

Categories: butter, chicken, cholesterol

Is a Bit of Butter Better for Heart Health than Margarine?

A new look at a 40-year-old study has uncovered that margarine isn’t better for your heart health than butter — it’s worse! For half a century, wellness experts have implored people to replace butter and other saturated fats in their diets, to reduce their risk of heart disease, and so people turned to margarine made from omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils found in corn and safflower oil.

However, as, decades later, heart disease is still the leading cause of death in both men and women, something doesn’t feel quite right. This is why the National Institutes of Health funded a new analysis of data collected from 1966 to 1973, on 458 men who had cardiovascular disease. The results indicate that replacing butter and other saturated fats with vegetable oils may have increased the risk of heart disease instead of reducing it, because those who did replace saturated fats in their diets with polyunsaturated vegetable oils had a 16% rate of dying from heart disease compared to a 10% death rate for those men who weren’t told to change their diets.

In an editorial accompanying the analysis, which was published in the British Medical Journal, University of Southampton professor Philip Calder said, ‘These findings argue against the “saturated fat bad, omega 6 polyunsaturated fat good” dogma,’ and the long-standing heart health recommendations, including those from the American Heart Association, ‘may be misguided.’

However, American holistic doctor David Brownstein, MD, says it’s old news. The author of Dr. David Brownstein’s Natural Way to Health, said he has been warning Americans about the dangers of margarine for years, and ‘this study was not surprising.’ According to Brownstein, switching to polyunsaturated and hydrogenated omega-6 oils means that now, ‘we have more cancer and chronic illness, and we still have high levels of heart disease.’

He explained, ‘Hydrogenated omega-6′s are terrible substances that should be avoided, and that’s what margarine is made of. Most of the oils found in grocery stores contain copious amounts of trans-fatty acids. These oils are full of toxic fats. Polyunsaturated vegetable spreads are not healthy substances and do not hold up well in high heat. They all turn to trans fats.’ He added, ‘Saturated fats are healthy fats required by all the cells of the body to maintain their structure. Butter is a much better choice than vegetable oils.’

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Is a Bit of Butter Better for Heart Health than Margarine?

Categories: butter, margarine, Research