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High Cholesterol Foods Guide

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If you are one of the millions of people that have high cholesterol, then it is important that you are aware of all the high cholesterol foods that you might be eating. There are basically three ways that you can reduce your cholesterol levels. These include: diet adjustments, exercise, and medication. Most doctors prefer to pursue the first two of diet and exercise before resorting to medication. Medication - like a good statin - are usually used as a last resort or if the doctor believes that your high cholesterol is genetic and independent of your lifestyle choices. In this article, we are going to focus on diet adjustments that you can make to lower your cholesterol.

The first thing we should clear up is how your diet can affect your cholesterol. The first way it can affect your cholesterol is through dietary cholesterol or foods that have cholesterol in them. The second way is by eating foods high in saturated and/or trans fats. This method is the most deadly because it causes your body to produce many times more cholesterol than just dietary cholesterol. Now, let's move on to some of the high cholesterol foods that you want to avoid. Keep in mind that the healthy daily limit of cholesterol is between 200 to 300 mg.

Fast Food
Cheese
Butter
Egg Yolk
Organ Meat

Fast food has been one of the biggest contributors to a decline in American's health through diet. Fast food is usually fried and very high in saturated fats - meaning that it is going to increase your cholesterol levels substantially. A Big Mac has 75 mg of cholesterol and a Whopper has 95 mg of cholesterol. That is pretty hefty!

A single slice of cheese has 19 mg of cholesterol, which doesn't seem much, but can really add up if you eat much cheese.

Butter has 250 mg of cholesterol for every 3.5 ounces. I know Paula Dean has some incredibly good recipes, but you should probably avoid adding a full stick of butter to every dish you make!

An egg yolk has 213 mg of cholesterol! That is nearly your daily limit right there. You can try egg substitutes like egg beaters if you really love eggs because they have little to no cholesterol.

Any kind of organ meat is going to have the highest level of cholesterol in any foods. A 3.5 oz. serving of organ meat is between 350 and 375 mg of cholesterol. Chicken liver might be the absolute worst at 98 mg of cholesterol per ounce!

If you can limit or eliminate these foods from your diet, then you will be that much closer to achieving the ideal cholesterol level.

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Sep 1, 2009 1:41pm

Vibrant19
Around 80% of total body cholesterol is manufactured in the liver, which means that only 15-20% of cholesterol comes from your diet. Cholesterol travels from the liver through the bloodstream to the various tissues in the body by means of a special class of protein molecules called lipoproteins. The cells take what they need, and any excess remains in the bloodstream until other lipoproteins pick it up for transport back to the liver.

Cholesterol made by the liver for tissues is transported in the largest of lipoprotein particles (very low density lipoproteins, VLDL). In the plasma, these are transformed to smaller lipoproteins (intermediate density lipoproteins, IDLP, and low density lipoproteins, LDL) by the action of enzymes. Cholesterol delivered directly to tissues is in the LDL form. Once inside the tissue cells, cholesterol is utilised for a variety of functions, (see below for details). The excess cholesterol is packed in the smallest of lipoprotein particles (high density lipoprotein, HDL) and transported back to the liver for processing.

How Cholesterol is used in the body.

(1)It serves as the precursor for bile acids that are formed in the liver and secreted in the bile to facilitate intestinal fat digestion.
(2)In the gonad and adrenal cortex, cholesterol is used to synthesise all steroid hormones.
(3)In the skin, it is used to form vitamin D3, a reaction requiring ultraviolet sun radiation.
(4)Cholesterol is found in abundance in the nerve tissue, where it is a component of the myelin sheath that electrically insulates the axons (the part of the nerve cell specialising in conducting impulses over large distances to other nerve, muscle, or gland cells).
(5)Cholesterol helps minimise evaporation of body water as well as making the skin waterproof.
(6)Last but not least, cholesterol is a stabilising component of the actual membranes of cells and their organelles (all cells contain ‘miniorgans’ called organelles, each specialised to perform a particular function, which is why liver cells differ from brain cells, which themselves differ from blood cells).

Hopefully you are now convinced that cholesterol is an essential substance in our body.