Cholesterol and Cooking

If you want to lower your cholesterol, you might want to cook your own meals as often as possible. That is because many restaurants add lots of fat and salt to their foods in order to add texture and taste at a lesser cost.

Convenience foods, of course, are famous for offering poor nutrition and plenty of fat, salt, and sugar.

If you would like to lower your cholesterol over the next 30 days, avoid all fast-food, convenience, and pre-packaged meals.

This is not hard to do, even if you are lost in the kitchen. There are a number of very fast and easy ways to ensure that you can whip up tasty and cholesterol-friendly meals, no matter how frantic your schedule is:

•  If you are very busy and tired at the end of a long day, a salad and sandwich can take less time to put together than it takes to phone the pizza parlor. Wrap some veggies in a tortilla, cut more veggies into a salad, and drizzle the salad with olive oil and lemon juice. Use a mashed avocado or salt-free salsa for the “dressing” on your sandwich. Soups and stir-fries are also friends for busy people who aren’t very handy in the kitchen.

•  Keep fresh ingredients at hand and don’t tempt yourself by keeping convenience food and junk food in your house.

•  Always choose fresh ingredients, the freshest that you can. Not only is this healthier, but you will need less fat and salt in your cooking if your food ingredients are full of flavour on their own.

•  Find low-fat and cholesterol-friendly recipes in cookbooks and plan to prepare them. There are many recipe books at your local library. And many of these feature heart-healthy and fast recipes that can make cholesterol-friendly eating a snap.

Don’t overlook cookbooks that feature Chinese, Japanese, Raw food, Vegan, and Indian recipes. These are often heart-friendly and contain lots of variety to keep you happy with your low-fat diet forever.

•  Buy some fresh herbs. Use them to add flavor to your cooking rather than relying on salt. If you must use salt, use only a pinch of the best sea salt that you are able to buy.

•  If you have recipes which you cannot part with, switch the ingredients around to suit yourself. Use a good olive oil instead of butter, low-fat products instead of the regular kind and experiment with cutting salt out of your recipes entirely.

Cooking to lower your cholesterol isn’t as hard as you might think. Here are a few basic food suggestions that almost anyone can make that can keep your health in good order:

Salads: Even if you are not an excellent cook, you can easily create a salad that is enticing. Simply chop up some of your favorite salad greens (mescalin mix, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, courgettes, herbs) and garnish it with a few nuts. You can make your own dressing by mixing herbs, such as basil or thyme, and a splash of lemon.

Or you can choose prepared dressings that are very low in salt and fats. You can also create a very low fat salad dressing by combining half an avocado with some herbs and lemon juice.

Avoid croutons, bacon bits, whole milk products such as chesses, eggs, and other high-fat foods in your salads. If you do want to add meat to your salad, choose some skinless poultry.

Fruit Salads: Chopping up some of your favorite fruits, berries, and lemons can make a beautiful and attractive salad that is low in fat. If you are using apples or other fruits that tend to go brown in your salad, a splash of lemon juice over your salad will keep your fruit salad attractive and healthy.

A fruit salad is an especially excellent choice for breakfast or a meal later on, and is appropriate even for those who have very high cholesterol and must follow a very low-fat and very low-cholesterol diet.

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