If you have high cholesterol, or are worried about developing high cholesterol, paying attention to your diet is the best thing you can do to directly reduce your risks. Foods like chorizo iberico, though tasty, can pose a higher risk than other choices. To know just how much riskier, you need to understand the fat content of chorizo iberico and what it means for your circulatory health.
Chorizo Iberico
Chorizo is a spicy Mexican sausage made from pig or cow meat, mixed with fillers and spices. Chorizo iberico is made specifically from the meat of Spanish black-hoofed iberico pigs. This is considered a high-quality meat, just as Angus beef is considered a premium brand of cow meat.
Cholesterol and Diet
Low-density lipoprotein -- LDL cholesterol -- is necessary for your tissue health, but it can jeopardize your heart by clumping up in your blood stream and making it work harder to pump blood. HDL cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein, actually improves your heart health by cleaning LDL out of your blood. Your body produces harmful LDL in response to saturated fats in your diet. It produces HDL in response to the presence of unsaturated fats.
Chorizo Iberico Nutrition
The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides nutrition information for hundreds of thousands of foods, including chorizo iberico. A single 60 g sausage link contains 52 g of dietary cholesterol -- almost 20 percent of your daily limit. That serving contains 8.5 g of saturated fat and 13 g of unsaturated fat.
Bottom Line
With its high content of cholesterol and saturated fat, eating chorizo iberico will stimulate your body to produce harmful LDL cholesterol. However, that effect is mitigated by the even higher content of unsaturated fats, which will help you produce HDL cholesterol that can counteract the effects of the LDL. This means chorizo iberico is a reasonably safe choice for people with normal cholesterol levels. If your cholesterol is so high that you're on a restricted diet, however, you should check with your doctor before adding chorizo iberico to your menus.
References
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
- La Tienda: Iberico Meat
- "You: The Owner's Manual"; Dr. Michael Roizen & Dr. Mehmet Oz; 2005
