Cholesterol Lowering Foods

August 3rd, 2009

If you want foods to lower cholesterol, it of course depends on your taste.  But this goes beyond the whole thing of eat your fruits and vegetables.  Those are good, but sometimes they just aren’t enough.  First of all, garlic.  Garlic is something we’ve all heard about.  It improves heart health, lowers bad cholesterol levels, and eating just a clove of garlic per day can lower bad cholesterol by up to 9%.  It releases the active ingredient allicin.  In addition, there are nuts.  This is one of those things that especially if you have an allergy like so many do, then obviously don’t use this one.  But nuts are full of protein, vitamins, minerals, magnesium which lowers high cholesterol and regulates blood pressure, and it’s high in the antioxidant vitamin E.  Olive oil can raise good cholesterol levels with good fats, which is essential.  Mushrooms are another one.  They can reduce high cholesterol by 45% when eaten for at least a month.  Now this is the only one of these I personally avoid.  I’ve heard the lecture about mushrooms not actually having a taste, and that is true of tofu, which is part of why it’s so good.  But with mushrooms they have a taste every time I’ve tried, and I just don’t like it.  So like I said, it depends on your preference.