What are high cholesterol foods?

Do you like steak and eggs? Macaroni and cheese? A lamb chop? Or a generous piece of cake and ice cream? Again, it's not only one of irony's of life but one of the tragedies of life as well - the better it tastes, the more cholesterol it seems to contain.

If you've been told to reduce the high cholesterol foods, it's a small comfort you're not alone. While nobody tells you to become a vegetarian, it's a good idea to be aware of your high cholesterol foods you eat – and take steps to control the eating of foods high in cholesterol.

To start with, you should know that there are two main nutrients in the foods you eat that make your cholesterol high. The high cholesterol foods contain:

- saturated fat, a type of fat found mostly in animal products; and

- cholesterol, which comes from animals as well.

Saturated fats raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol level more than anything else in the diet. Eating too much saturated fat is the main reason for high cholesterol levels and a high rate of heart attacks. It makes sense that reducing the amount of saturated fat you eat is a very important step in reducing your cholesterol levels.

If you stop them completely you don't miss anything (except the taste), since your body makes all the cholesterol you need. As such, it is not necessary to take in any additional cholesterol from the foods you eat.

You must be aware of "cholesterol free" foods, because cholesterol coming from foods (or dietary cholesterol) is hardly as harmful as the amount of saturated fats in your food.

You can call them foods that cause high cholesterol, or high cholesterol foods, but in reality it is not the cholesterol content that makes them harmful. It is the fat, or better the saturated fats (which come mainly from meats, nuts and dairy foods), which causes the liver to produce more harmful cholesterol.

The liver produces 4 times the amount of cholesterol from our diets. This makes saturated fat much more harmful than dietary cholesterol and renders dietary cholesterol as quite as negligible factor for your high cholesterol levels, or cardiovascular disease risk factor.

For example, coconut oil may be cholesterol free, but is highly saturated and more dangerous than seafood, as it causes the liver to produce more harmful cholesterol. Saturated fat also raises triglyceride levels and thickens the blood.

Seafood, on the other hand, contains cholesterol, but also the protective polyunsaturated fats that cause the liver to produce less harmful cholesterol and more protective HDL cholesterol.

That's why, rather than worry about diabetes and high cholesterol foods, you should pay attention to foods high in saturated fats.

I find it that the phrase "high cholesterol foods" is somehow not correct. What you should pay attention to, is foods high in saturated fats or foods high in triglycerides, since triglycerides make up 95 percent of all the fats we eat.

Whenever you read "high cholesterol foods" (which is mentioned often in this page) it means foods high in triglycerides or saturated fats. High cholesterol foods are mainly found in all animals and animal products, for example, egg yolks, meat, poultry, fish and higher fat milk products.

In addition, beware of processed and prepared foods. Although convenient, they are very high cholesterol foods as well as high in saturated fats. Cookies, pastries, and muffins are as well, part of high cholesterol foods "family" and contain high amounts of fat.

In case your diet does not contain high cholesterol foods, but you still have high cholesterol levels, then to learn how to lower your cholesterol without any side effects, click here.

You should limit the intake of all these high cholesterol foods. And, always pay attention to food package labels to check fat and cholesterol levels.

Keep in mind the following when these labels say: