The Best Low Cholesterol Diet Plan
Following a good diet plan can greatly help in reducing your cholesterol levels. What you eat or what you usually eat everyday can affect your body’s cholesterol levels. This idea has been known by many people for a long time now.
Cholesterol is often connected with the occurrence of coronary heart disease. That is why reducing cholesterol levels is extremely important. If a person has higher blood cholesterol levels, then he has higher risk of having heart disease in the long run. In particular, a person may suffer from heart attack or stroke if he has high cholesterol levels.
To keep your cholesterol at a low level, you need to follow a low-cholesterol diet. It is the second best way to control cholesterol in the body next to taking medications. Like taking medications, eating healthy foods can be effective at lowering cholesterol in the blood. The best low cholesterol diet plan may consist of soy products, vegetables, and other foods that contain small amounts of cholesterol. A study has proved that a vegetarian diet can reduce cholesterol levels by as much as 30 percent in only one month.
Also, the best low cholesterol diet plan that any person can follow includes big servings of vegetables like red peppers and broccoli. To complete your low-cholesterol diet, you can include in it fruits and nuts, oat bran bread and cereal, as well as soymilk and soy sausages. Nuts, soy protein, and foods that contain fiber such as barley and oats are effective in reducing cholesterol levels by as much as seven percent.
If you are on a low-cholesterol diet, you need to lessen your saturated fat intake by seven percent. You also have to cut your intake of other fat substances by 25 to 35 percent. According to research, the best low cholesterol diet plan that can prevent coronary heart disease involves taking in unprocessed or non-hydrogenated fats instead of hydrogenated fats. In a low-cholesterol diet, it is strongly recommended that you take more omega-3 fats from fish and fish oil. It is also ideal to have an increased intake of plant sources such as flaxseeds. The low-cholesterol diet also requires a person to control intake of sodium and limit it to about 2,400 milligrams a day.
Here is how the best low cholesterol diet plan should be followed on a daily basis. A typical low-cholesterol breakfast consists of oatmeal bread, oat bran cereal with chopped fruit and almonds, soymilk, jam, and vegetable-based margarine. For lunch, the low-cholesterol diet plan includes oat bran bread, soy cold cuts, bean soup, and a fruit for dessert. A typical low-cholesterol dinner, on the other hand, is composed of tofu, almonds, stir-fry vegetables, and fruits. If you strictly follow this diet plan for a long time, then it is more likely that your cholesterol level will be lower by up to 29 percent in only one month. Make sure that your heart gets more nutrition—not more cholesterol—by sticking to the best low cholesterol diet plan.