“You are what you eat!” as quoted from Dr Gillian McKeith has often been termed as the mantra for food lovers like you and me. However, is it necessarily true for all cases,or it is only a phrase we quote often to satisfy our own craving for food. Low cholesterol meals such as those with huge servings of oats, barley added with a generous serving of soy protein, fruits and vegetables; are they really the concoction for a healthy cholesterol level?
Instead of drinking coffee each day, why not try 1 or 2 glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice? Especially if the juice contains plant sterols that have cholesterol lowering properties, it can actually promote lowered cholesterol levels in your body. Not only do you get to enjoy the sweetness and the great taste of orange, you enjoy the benefits of lower cholesterol that it brings. However, if you are not an orange lover, other frit juices namely cranberry juice, grapefruit juice or grape juice would do fine. Actually, any other citric fruit would actually bring the benefits of reduced cholesterol in our bodies! However, if you are such a coffee freak, another suggestion would be to use paper filters when brewing your favorite cup of coffee. These filters would ensure that substances that would cause high cholesterol would be not left inside your coffee.
Also, instead of using normal cooking oil, use olive oil generously during cooking or for salad dressings! Olive oil has been proven to contain lesser amounts of saturated fat that is one of the main causes of high cholesterol. Besides using it for cooking purposes, people from Spain, Italy have regularly used olive oil in place of butter to spread on bread. Due to such a custom, is has resulted in these places having the least amount of heart disease cases in the whole of Europe.
Not forgetting seafood, it has been scientifically proven that mackerel, salmon and even sardines and many other kinds of fish contain huge amounts of omega 3 fatty acids. With the consumption of these fishes daily, we fulfill our bodies daily needed intake of omega 3 fatty acids that are also able to lower cholesterol levels to a healthy level.
From the various examples given above, we can see the obvious benefits that a low cholesterol meal can give us, but it is not necessarily true that just by having a healthy diet of low cholesterol products, we would have a healthy cholesterol level. Besides a good diet, we need to have a lifestyle of exercise and avoid vices such as smoking or excessive consumption of liquor. Only when these conditions are met, one can have a lowered chance of having high cholesterol, but they are still not protected fully from the possibility of contracting diseases associated with high cholesterol.
