Cholesterol and Your Diet

Because your body makes all the cholesterol it needs, any added cholesterol you put in it from food is extra. For this reason, it’s important to know which foods are high in cholesterol so that you can limit your intake or eliminate them from your diet altogether.

Unsaturated, Saturated and Trans Fat
As you may already know, not all fats are bad. Knowing which fats raise your LDL cholesterol and which ones don’t will help you maintain a heart-healthy diet and minimize your risk for heart disease.

First, the fats to avoid: saturated fat and trans fat. Saturated fat is the main dietary cause of high cholesterol. The American Heart Association recommends limiting your saturated fat intake to 7–10 percent or less of your total calories each day. For a 2,000-calorie diet, that’s between 140 and 200 calories.

Saturated fat is found mostly in food from animals. This includes beef, beef fat, veal, lamb, pork, lard, poultry fat, butter, cream, milk, cheese and other whole-milk dairy products. These foods also contain dietary cholesterol. A few plant-derived foods contain saturated fats including cocoa butter, coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel (tropical) oil. Though it’s best to avoid saturated fat entirely, if you can’t, you should try to eat as little saturated fat as possible.

Trans fat occurs naturally in some animal products like beef, pork, lamb, butter and milk; however, it is more widely known for its role in processed foods. Because many manufacturers want their food products to have a long shelf life, they often hydrogenate some of the food’s polyunsaturated oils, which is a fancy way of saying that they alter the chemical makeup of the oil by adding hydrogen to it. Aside from a longer shelf life, the effect of hydrogenation is that what was originally an unsaturated fat now acts in the body like a saturated fat: it raises total cholesterol and LDL while lowering HDL. Some research even shows that trans fat is more harmful to your body than saturated fat.

Most food labels now have to include the amount of trans fat in a product, but because of the way standards are set, foods with “negligible” amounts of trans fat can get away with claiming to have no trans fat at all. This would probably be okay if we were to limit the amount of processed foods we eat and actually stick to the recommended serving size. Because this is rarely the case for many people, we end up eating a lot of hidden trans fat. To seek out hidden trans fat, look for the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” in ingredient lists. Monitoring your trans fat intake becomes harder if you eat a lot of fast food. As of now, there are no trans fat standards for the fast food industry. Eat fast food as infrequently as possible, since it is often high in both saturated fat and trans fat.

Instead of saturated or trans fat, opt for food prepared with “good” or unsaturated fat. Unsaturated fats are mainly plant derived and may help lower your cholesterol level when used in place of “bad” fats. There are two kinds of unsaturated fats: polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. Polyunsaturated fats include corn; soybeans; safflower, sunflower and sesame seeds; a variety of nuts; and the oils from these foods. Examples of monounsaturated fats are olive, canola and peanut oils and avocados. Even though unsaturated fat is considered “good,” it should still only be eaten in moderation.

Butter vs. margarine
The question of butter versus margarine seems to be a never-ending debate in the nutrition world. Whether one is better for you than the other is really up to you to decide. Butter is high in both saturated fat and cholesterol and should only be used in strictest moderation. If you opt for margarine instead, you should be aware that many types of margarine are full of trans fat (which according to some experts is worse for you than the saturated fat in butter). Perhaps the best choice would be to look for a margarine or butter substitute that is both low in trans fat and cholesterol. The more liquid the substitute, the less hydrogenated it is and the less trans fat it has.

Are eggs really okay?
In the past few years, it seems eggs have staged a comeback. Several years ago they were considered one of the worst foods you could eat if you were trying to manage your cholesterol. Now those rules don’t seem as strict. So are they really okay to eat if you are trying to maintain low cholesterol?

The truth is, eggs (or more precisely, egg yolks) do contain a significant amount of cholesterol: 213 mg in one egg. Considering the daily limit is 300 mg, that’s a lot of cholesterol for not a lot of food. So that’s the dilemma. You can have your egg (singular) in the morning, but would then have to severely limit the amount of cholesterol you consume throughout the rest of the day to stay within the recommended daily limit. Another alternative would be to eat only the egg whites or to use an egg substitute.

Eating a heart-healthy diet
The American Heart Association offers these suggestions for maintaining a heart-healthy diet:

• Eat only as many calories as you burn.
• Eat a variety of nutrient-rich foods.
• Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit.
• Choose whole grains.
• Eat fish twice a week.
• Avoid nutrient-poor foods.
• Limit the amount of cholesterol, saturated fat and trans fat you eat.
• Choose lean means and poultry without the skin; prepare them without added saturated and trans fats.
• Select fat-free or low-fat dairy products.
• Eat fewer foods containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
• Eat fewer foods high in dietary cholesterol.
• Cut back on beverages with added sugars.
• Choose and prepare foods with little or no salt.
• Drink only in moderation.
• Choose low-fat, low-salt meals when dining out.
• Read the nutrition labels and ingredient lists before buying your food.

For a more comprehensive lifestyle and dietary plan to reduce your cholesterol, consider following the National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute’s Guide to Lowering your Cholesterol with TLC: Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes, available for download here.