Cholesterol in Food – Good or Bad?
I’ve been asked this question several times and want to take a moment to explain how the cholesterol found in foods relates to your blood cholesterol levels.
Dietary Cholesterol
Cholesterol is found in animal products, such as cheese, steak, and eggs. You will not find cholesterol from plant sources. The cholesterol in foods is simply “dietary cholesterol”. It is neither “good” nor “bad”. When you consume a food containing cholesterol the different components of the food are processed by the body. The liver packages the dietary cholesterol into low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. This is where the labels “good” and “bad” come into play. (FYI – There are other packages, such as very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol, but for simplicity we’ll stick with LDL and HDL.)
Check out the post Cholesterol – Good versus Bad to better understand the labels give to LDL and HDL cholesterol.
Dietary Cholesterol Guidelines
Dietary cholesterol does play a role in your blood cholesterol levels; however, saturated fat has a greater impact.
The American Heart Association recommends dietary cholesterol be limited to less than 300 mg/day. If you are at increased risk for heart disease you want to restrict your dietary cholesterol intake further to 200 mg/day.
Currently the American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 7% your total daily calories. This is an area currently under some debate due to recent study findings questioning the link between saturated fat and LDL cholesterol. However, these studies argue that there is little evidence to support a diet restricting saturated fat below 9% of your total daily calories. In my opinion based on findings to date, the debate is somewhat trying to split hairs and the bottom line is you can include some saturated fat, but let the majority of your fat calories be from heart healthy sources.
All the best,
Lisa Nelson RD
How to Lower Cholesterol in 8 Simple Steps
http://www.lowercholesterolwithlisa.com
