Foods to Avoid High Cholesterol Diet

Foods to avoid high cholesterol, this means foods to avoid if you have high cholesterol. By eating a healthy diet of foods to avoid high cholesterol, can occur raising the risk of heart disease and stroke. You must be limiting your average daily cholesterol intake to less than 300 milligrams. If you have heart disease, limit your daily intake to less than 200 milligrams. People can significantly lower their dietary cholesterol intake by keeping their dietary intake of saturated fats low and by avoiding foods that are high in saturated fat and that contain substantial amounts of dietary cholesterol.

Recent studies show that cholesterol levels are affected more by the kinds of fat you eat rather than how much cholesterol you get in your diet. For instance, most healthy people can eat up to one egg (which contains about 200 mg of cholesterol) per day without it substantially affecting their cholesterol levels. Although it is still important to limit high cholesterol foods, especially if you have heart disease, you should try to avoid foods with trans fats and limit foods high in saturated fat. You should also try to achieve a healthy weight, be physically active, and eat foods that are high in fiber such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Include healthy sources of fats in your diet such as fish, nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils that may actually increase your HDL (good cholesterol) levels.

High amounts of saturated fat are found in animal products, such as fatty cuts of meat, chicken skin, and full-fat dairy products like butter, whole milk, cream, and cheese, and in tropical vegetable oils such as palm, palm kernel, and coconut oil. Trans fat is found in some of the same foods as saturated fat, such as vegetable shortening, some margarines (especially hard or stick margarine), crackers, cookies, baked goods, fried foods, salad dressings, and other processed foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Small amounts of trans fat also occur naturally in some animal products, such as milk products, beef, and lamb. High cholesterol foods to be avoided include liver, other organ meats, egg yolks, shrimp, and full-fat dairy products.

Many fat-free foods are just as high in calories and sugar than their “full-fat” counterpart. For example some reduced-fat cookies have 150 calories per serving, 14 grams of sugar, and 4.5 grams of fat. Their regular counterparts have only 10 more calories, 2.5 more grams of fat, and almost the same amount of sugar. People may end up eating more fat and calories overall when they choose reduced-fat because they think they can have larger portions.

A good option is to choose foods to avoid high cholesterol that are naturally low in fat like whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and low-fat dairy instead of reduced fat packaged foods. Make those other items an occasional “treat” and focus on proper portions rather than worrying solely about their fat content. If you know the foods to avoid high cholesterol, it is easy to keep your cholesterol levels under control.