Should you be looking at the cholesterol content in the foods you eat or would it be best to look at saturated fats? The answer might surprise you.

With all the talk these days about the cholesterol levels of food, and all the horrible effects cholesterol can have on our hearts, it might surprise you to know high cholesterol content, or low cholesterol content for that matter, isn’t necessarily what we should look for in our dietary choices.

Coconut oil is an example of a cholesterol-free food, so you might be fooled into thinking it’s fairly innocent. But coconut oil is high in saturated fats which in turn cause the liver to produce the harmful LDL cholesterol. On the other end of the spectrum is seafood, which contains cholesterol but also contains “polyunsaturated fats” that experts say will stimulate the liver to produce the less-harmful cholesterol called HDL (the “good” variety of cholesterol).

So you don’t necessarily have to panic when you read the label and a food you enjoy contains high levels of cholesterol. Don’t worry so much about some of the foods with high cholesterol levels, but worry instead about the foods containing high-saturated fats. Foods with high levels of saturated fats could be thought of like the little brother or sister who gets their sibling all fired; minutes later they look innocent when mom or dad catches big brother or big sister flipping out.

Dig a little deeper and see if you can find what end result a particular food will have on your body. That food choice might not be as innocent, or as evil as it first appears. Root out the real cause of your high cholesterol levels and you’ll be well on your way to a healthier heart and living a longer life.

Remember that saturated fats are also very high in calories!

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High cholesterol levels, do they harm the body and heart or has this information been over blown and cholesterol levels aren’t really that important?  Even the research studies can’t agree.

The Framingham Heart Study claims to show a cause-and-effect relationship between high cholesterol levels and coronary heart disease. This study indicates those with higher levels of blood cholesterol are more likely to develop coronary heart disease (CHD) than those with lower levels.

It shows coronary heart disease is unusual at low cholesterol levels, and therefore claims proof that low cholesterol levels are the key to overall heart health.

Another recent series of trials studied the effects of statin drugs (a type of cholesterol-lowering medication) and claimed lowering the total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol reduces the risk of heart attack, angioplasty (a bypass that requires surgery) and death from coronary disease.

But other experts disagree with the findings of the cholesterol-equals-death crowd. Some experts do not see a cause-and-effect relationship between too much cholesterol and heart disease in these studies.

These experts go as far as arguing there is no such thing as “bad” cholesterol or “good” cholesterol. They have observed that mental stress, physical activity and a change of body weight may all influence blood cholesterol levels and conclude that a high cholesterol level is only the reflection of an already unhealthy condition.
Cholesterol is seen like a fever: if you remove the flu, then the fever will go away too. Instead of, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” these experts ask, “Which came first, the high cholesterol levels or the poor health?”

So if the experts can’t even agree on the dangers of high cholesterol, what are we supposed to do? Does the disagreement give us free reign to go out and eat high-cholesterol foods to our heart’s content?

Some might make such claims, but we all know the effect fatty foods can have on our waistline. Since neither school of though would say excess body fat is exactly healthy, it might be better to err on the safe side.

I also remember when I use to donate blood and when I donated after a meal of a burger and fries the donation time would take a lot longer than if I had a salad for lunch. After checking around I found that the fat in the burger and fries would indeed make the texture of blood thicker compared to having a lower fat meal.  I don’t know if I want my heart to have to work harder to push around thick blood, so I try to watch what I eat and stay on the low cholesterol side of things.

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