Your levels of cholesterol are important to your cardiovascular health, as they are reliable indicators of your risk for problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. To maintain healthy cholesterol levels, you need to be aware of how the foods you eat -- for example, calamari -- affect your cholesterol.
Cholesterol Basics
Cholesterol plays an important role in your health, carrying raw materials to different parts of your body for use in your daily body functions. However, LDL, known as the "bad" cholesterol can clump in your bloodstream. This can harden arteries and make your heart work harder to pump blood throughout your body. By contrast, HDL, or "good," cholesterol improves your circulatory health by cleaning contaminants -- including LDL cholesterol -- out of your blood.
Cholesterol and Diet
Your body produces cholesterol in response to the presence of fats in your diet. Eating saturated fats stimulates your body to produce harmful LDL cholesterol. According to MayoClinic.com, research shows that unsaturated fats can improve blood cholesterol levels.
Calamari Nutrition
According to the USDA, a typical 3-oz serving of fried calamari contains 1.6 g of saturated fat and 5 g of unsaturated fat.
Calamari and Cholesterol
While, saturated fat can elevate your levels of harmful LDL cholesterol, calamari contains more than three times as much unsaturated fat as saturated fat. The bottom line is that calamari is good for your cholesterol if you have a healthy cholesterol level, but if you already have high cholesterol, you will want to stick with foods that contain less saturated fat and consume calamari only as an occasional treat.
Cooking Methods
The USDA nutrition information is based on unbreaded, fried calamari. Many cooking methods call for breading, deep frying or covering the calamari with rich sauces. All these methods can add significant amounts of extra saturated fat to your meal, increasing the cholesterol.
