If you want to improve your cholesterol numbers, it may help to lose weight, exercise more, consume less sugar and moderate your intake of alcohol. You can also add and eliminate specific foods to reduce your levels of two unhealthy fats -- low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides. Healthy cholesterol levels, important to everyone, especially benefit you if you have a family or personal history of heart disease.
Reduce Fat Intake
To reduce cholesterol in your bloodstream, reduce the amount of unhealthy fat -- cholesterol, saturated fat and trans fat -- in your diet. MayoClinic.com recommends you keep your total fat consumption to no more than 20 to 35 percent of your daily calories or about 44 to 78 g. Include no more than 22 g of saturated fat in your diet, about 10 percent of your daily calories. The American Heart Association recommends you keep saturated fat to 7 percent of your daily calorie or 16 g. Eat little or no trans fat -- no more than 2 g or 1 percent of your daily calories. Limit dietary cholesterol to 300 mg daily -- 200 mg daily if you face high risk of heart disease.
Foods to Add to Your Diet
MayoClinic.com recommends you add olive oil, soluble fiber, nuts, omega-3 fatty acids and plant sterols to your diet to lower cholesterol. While saturated fats and trans fat can raise your cholesterol, olive oil can help lower it. Use olive oil in salad dressings or in place of butter, margarine or shortening when cooking. Use about 2 tbsp. daily. Soluble fiber, from whole grains such as oatmeal and fruit such as pears, helps push fat out of your digestive system. Include a minimum of 5 g of soluble fiber to your daily diet. Nuts and omega-3 fatty acids also help remove cholesterol buildup. Eat a handful of nuts, such as walnuts and almonds, every day and eat fish such as lake trout and mackerel two to three times a week. You can find plant sterols in some types of margarine, yogurt drinks and orange juice. Adding 2 g of plant sterols daily may help reduce cholesterol.
Cholesterol and Saturated Fat in Foods
A diet to lower cholesterol will include less red meat and more fish, poultry and vegetable protein. You can still eat red meat if you keep your portions small and choose lean cuts. A 3.5-oz of beef sirloin, for instance, contains 89 mg of cholesterol and 5 g of saturated fat. The same amount of tuna contains 30 mg of cholesterol and no saturated fat. Skinless chicken contains nearly as much cholesterol as beef sirloin -- 85 mg -- but only 1 g of saturated fat in a 3.5-oz. serving. Vegetable protein contains no cholesterol and little or no saturated fat. Good choices include tofu, black beans and kidney beans. An egg contains 212 mg of cholesterol.
Considerations
Although cholesterol occurs only in animal products, both animal products and tropical oils contain saturated fat. You might find saturated fat in commercial baked goods and snacks. Trans fat, found in margarine and shortening, may also lurk in store-bought cakes, cookies and potato chips or fried food at some restaurants and doughnut shops. You can get more trans fat than you should consume in three sandwich cookies. Check food nutrition labels before buying packaged and processed food.
References
- MayoClinic.com; Cholesterol: Top 5 Foods to Lower Your Numbers; May 2010
- MayoClinic.com; Healthy Diet: End the Guesswork With These Nutrition Guidelines; February 2011
- American Heart Association; Saturated Fats; October 2010
- Business Week; The Top 10 Trans-Fat Foods; June 2006
- University of California San Francisco; Cholesterol Content of Foods; February 2011
- MayoClinic.com; High Cholesterol; June 2010
