What are the best foods to eat to ensure one’s cholesterol stays low?
Anything that comes from plants.
Missed the edit window: Could I also ask, how is one’s cholesterol tested? Thanks.
Except coconut oils (the stuff in non-dairy creamer) - that is one of the most cholesterol inducing substances out there.
Eating cholesterol doesn’t necessarily lead to higher levels than eating the wrong kinds of fats. It’s all in what the liver does with it.
Reduce fat intake, especially the saturated fats and trans fats.
This means you have to watch out for some plant products, such as avocados and tropical oils like Palm.
Eat lots of high fiber stuff, as this binds to your bile salts, and removes them from the colon rather than allowing reabsorption into your blood, where your body can easily rebuild them back into cholesterol molecules.
Cholesterol is veasured in a simple blood test. For more precise results, get a Fasting Lipid Panel (requires no caloric intake for 12 hours before the blood draw) as this will give you relative fractions of total, good, and bad cholesterol along with triglyceride levels.
FWIW, from a health standpoint it may be better to focusing on increasing HDL (‘good’ cholesterol) rather than just lowering all cholesterols.
Eating fish is a pretty darn good way to do that. Also, adding ground flax seed to your breakfast (stir in yogurt, sprinkle on cereal or toast, etc) can lower overall numbers.
And, as everyone else said, switch to a lower fat diet rich in plant items, low fat dairy, and limit your intake of fatty or processed meats.
This always ends up devolving into a debate, but I’ve been on an Atkins diet for close to 10 years now and my cholesterol is great. The fat in my diet is around 65% of my total calories. I’m on no cholesterol lowering medications at all.
Total cholesterol 167, triglycerides 73, HDL 63, LDL 89, VLDL 15. I just happen to be holding my test results from my annual physical, that’s how I know. There may be a genetic component, but a lot of my siblings are on statins and low fat diets and have far worse numbers than mine.
In particular, certain fibers have been shown to be particularly good at this, such as oat fiber and psyllium fiber.
Oats are easy (and obvious) enough to get into your diet (though oatmeal raisin cookies don’t count). As a general rule, you’d need to eat a good-sized (but not ridiculously so) bowl of an oat-based cereal every day (such as oatmeal, Cheerios, Oat Bran, etc.) to have a noticeable reduction. When I worked at Quaker Oats, they had a number of studies which showed, on average, doing that for 30 days would reduce total cholesterol by an average of 15 or so points. Not huge, but not insignificant.
Psyllium isn’t generally in a lot of food products, though it’s the primary ingredient in many fiber laxatives, such as Metamucil.
Thanks for the info guys. FYI, here’s what I eat at the moment.
Breakfast: 2 bowls of oatmeal porridge with skimmed milk and a little sugar (only about half a teaspoon’s worth, just for flavouring).
Lunch: Soup (usually tomato soup or meatballs) and a couple of bread sticks. Failing that I might have some shrimp and salmon sushi.
Dinner: Grilled skinless chicken breast, white rice and vegetables. I try to make sure I eat salmon for dinner once a week as well.
On those rare occasions I hit the gym I’ll also have a protein shake and if I snack between meals (and I usually don’t) it’ll either be a small bag of Dorito’s or an apple or something.
Is that an okay diet for keeping cholesterol low?
For some people, diet only has a minimal effect on cholesterol levels. You can eat nothing but oatmeal and wheat grass and still have high cholesterol due to genetic factors. In my case, the best thing I did to lower my bad cholesterol and raise my good was to lose weight. Your body can convert any extra fat into bad cholesterol so the actual food going in your body isn’t the final determining factor.
Hypoapobetalipoproteinemia.
I know it well as I also have it. I was told by my Dr. I could eat nothing but lettuce and still have high numbers.
So, with that in mind, keeping HDL high is what I focus on. 
OP, have you ever had a lipid panel?
I eat a hearty diet of 70% fat, mostly animal fat and lots of it saturated (I also eat whole foods only). I have low total cholesterol, low LDL, high HDL, and very low triglycerides, all of which are considered ideal. But I know some people who eat the same diet I do have high total cholesterol and LDL (it produces higher HDL and very low trigs pretty consistently however).
As a diet that looks perfectly fine … if that’s really all you are eating! But be aware that for many people, the cholesterol levels in their blood are only mildly affected by how much of it they eat. I cut out all cholesterol in my diet for 3 months and got only a mild reduction (7.6 to 7.2 when the target was to get below 5.5, IIRC - it was many years ago). If that is the case for you too then exercise and possibly statins are the only answer.
Lots of misinformation above I don’t have time to address.
If you’re concerned about your cholesterol, why are you eating all the carbohydrates? There is no empirical evidence to support the Lipid Hypothesis, but plenty of evidence to suggest carbohydrates are atherogenic.
Carbohydrates:
1) Increase triglycerides.
2) Reduce HDL.
3) Increase LDL, particularly the small, dense LDL particles that are thought to have increased tendency to penetrate the endothelial barrier of the arteries, have been shown to oxidize more readily, and are more likely to undergo glycation.
4) Increase VLDL.
5) Promote the insulin response driving fat into the fat cells, particularly visceral fat.
6) Raise blood pressure.
7) Increase C-reactive protein and other indicators of inflammation.
8) Raise blood sugar.
Gee, I wonder what it could be that’s causing all of the heart disease we’ve been seeing? If you’re an M.D., you’ll probably think that dietary fat is the culprit :rolleyes:.
Vegetarian baked beans. High fiber/protein, 0 fat 0 cholesterol. Just don’t dump a bunch of bacon or ham into it.
Just to be clear about one point, cholesterol itself is only found in animal products (meat, eggs, and dairy). But the body can manufacture cholesterol as well, in significantly larger amounts than what we eat directly, so the real question behind a “low cholesterol diet” is not “what foods are low in cholesterol”, but “what foods inhibit, or at least don’t promote, the body’s production of cholesterol”.
It’s been proven that dietary cholesterol intake has no effect on blood cholesterol levels and most doctors are now aware of this. Saturated fat is now considered by most medical professionals to be a contributor to high total cholesterol - but that’s debatable as well if you are interested in looking at the actual research.
OP: like Surreal I would assume what you are eating now will lead to higher cholesterol rather than lower (but it depends on your genetics really). Far too many carbohydrates. But compared with what the average person eats, that’s pretty good.
Gesundheit.
Shrimp are high in cholesterol. Read the paragraph under “Shrimp provide cardiovascular benefits” on this websight. You might not want to have it for lunch too often.
[quote=“Surreal, post:14, topic:547631”]
Lots of misinformation above I don’t have time to address.
If you’re concerned about your cholesterol, why are you eating all the carbohydrates? There is no empirical evidence to support the Lipid Hypothesis, but plenty of evidence to suggest carbohydrates are atherogenic.
Carbohydrates:
1) Increase triglycerides.
2) Reduce HDL.
3) Increase LDL, particularly the small, dense LDL particles that are thought to have increased tendency to penetrate the endothelial barrier of the arteries, have been shown to oxidize more readily, and are more likely to undergo glycation.
4) Increase VLDL.
5) Promote the insulin response driving fat into the fat cells, particularly visceral fat.
6) Raise blood pressure.
7) Increase C-reactive protein and other indicators of inflammation.
8) Raise blood sugar.
QUOTE]
GREAT summary!! More and more evidence coming out supporting every point given here. You need cholesterol, and sat fat has been demonized.