We are constantly being bombarded with healthy eating advice – whether you turn on the TV, open a newspaper, flick through a magazine or even walk into your local chemist. While it’s good news that more of us are aware of the important role of eating healthily to help maintain our health, with so much advice about diet and nutrition in the news, it can be difficult to understand what is fact or fiction. But don't worry, we have sorted through the 10 most common food myths regarding diet and cholesterol for you.
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Myth 1-I am taking statin medication to help control my cholesterol, so I don’t need to pay as close attention to my diet anymore?
False – Following a healthy diet and lifestyle is vitally important, even when taking statins, as it offers a wealth of additional cholesterol lowering and heart health benefits.
One of the most favourable dietary changes to reduce your cholesterol is to cut down on fat (especially saturated fat). Saturated fat is quite easy to spot as it is usually solid at room temperature and is mainly from animal sources. It is found mainly in full fat dairy products (lard, butter, ghee, cheese, cream and whole milk), palm and coconut oil and is hidden in cakes and biscuits. It's also found in processed foods such as takeaways, pastries, sausages, burgers and meat pies. The Guideline Daily Amounts for saturated fat are 20g/day for a woman and 30g/day for a man. Look out for nutritional information on food labels or the traffic lights or Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) systems to help you in your food choices. It's also a good idea to increase the amount of fruit, vegetables and fibre you eat, while cutting down on your salt intake.
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Myth 2-I only eat ‘good’ fats, so I don’t need to worry too much about my weight affecting my cholesterol level.
False – As your question suggests, there are better types of fat than others for looking after your cholesterol levels, but don't forget that all fats have the same amount of calories. Gram for gram, fat provides more than double the calories of protein and carbohydrate (one gram of fat contains nine calories, whereas proteins and carbohydrates contains four) – so if you eat a lot of fat in your diet and don't exercise to burn off the calories, your weight will gradually increase. Too much of the healthier oils, such as olive, rapeseed or sunflower, can make you put on weight just as easily as putting too much butter over your vegetables!
The key is not to use too much of any one type of fat: keep frying to a minimum, and apply all the usual healthy eating rules – such as using semi skimmed milk instead of full cream milk, trimming all visible fat from meat and swapping creamy-based sauces for tomato-based ones.
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Myth 3-If you have been told by your GP to reduce your cholesterol, you need to remove all cholesterol rich foods from your diet.
False – Many people still think that they need to cut down or cut out foods that naturally contain cholesterol such as liver, kidneys, eggs and shellfish. But the advice of the British Heart Foundation, HEART UK and Food Standards Agency is that if you want to lower your blood cholesterol levels, or keep them down, watching the amount of saturated fat you consume is more important.
To help do this, avoid/cut down on foods high in saturated fat found mainly in full fat dairy products (lard, butter, ghee, cheese, cream and whole milk), palm and coconut oil and hidden in cakes and biscuits. It's also found in processed foods such as takeaways, pastries, sausages, burgers and meat pies. The Guideline Daily Amounts for saturated fat are 20g/day for a woman and 30g/day for a man. Comparing saturated fat levels on food labels in the supermarket is a great way to start achieving lower saturated fat intakes.
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Myth 4-If the label says 'low fat' or 'reduced fat', it will always be a healthy food.
False – Be cautious. To claim that a product is 'reduced fat', the amount of fat must be at least 30% lower than the standard equivalent. So if the type of food in question is high in fat in the first place, the low fat version may also still be high in fat. To claim that a product is 'low fat’ the amount of fat must be at less than 3g fat per 100g serving.
Additionally, foods labelled 'low fat' or 'reduced fat' aren't necessarily always low in calories. The fat is replaced by other ingredients like sugar, so the product can end up with the same or having an even higher energy (calorie) content.
Also, if you're tempted to eat more of a reduced-fat food than you would of the full-fat version, you might end up eating the same, or even more, fat and energy.
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Myth 5-Eggs are bad for your cholesterol.
False – It's often a common source of confusion because the recommendation has changed over the years. Health experts now agree that saturated fat has much more of an impact on cholesterol levels than eating foods like eggs, shellfish and offal (liver and kidney) that contain cholesterol. The British Heart Foundation, British Nutrition Foundation, HEART UK and the Food Standards Agency has now changed their guidelines and lifted the limits on the number of eggs we can eat.
Far from being unhealthy, there are lots of health benefits to adding eggs to your daily diet. As well as being low in calories (80 in a medium egg), eggs contain vitamins A and D, B2, B12 and folate and the minerals phosphorus, iodine and selenium. There is also increasing evidence that having an egg in the morning, with its high protein content, is the most perfect start to the day, as they are filling and can help you to eat fewer calories over the rest of the day.
For more information visit www.nutritionandeggs.co.uk
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Myth 6-Red meat is always very high in fat and poultry is always low in fat.
False – Removing visible fat can make a big difference to the fat content of meat. In fact, according to the Food Standards Agency lean red meat is quite low in fat at 4–8g per 100g.
When the lean and fat components of meat are blended together in mince or meat products, this can make the fat content much higher. Meat products, whether they've been made from red meat or poultry, can also be high in fat because of the other high fat ingredients they contain, such as the pastry in a meat pie or pasty.
Skinned poultry meat only contains about 1–3g fat per 100g and white meat contains less fat than darker meat. But if the skin and fatty deposits beneath it aren't removed, the fat content will be much higher.
So try to go for leaner cuts, always remove the visible fat, and remove the skin from poultry.
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Myth 7-Most of our cholesterol is made by the body, so diet doesn’t really matter.
False – 80% of the cholesterol in our bodies is indeed made by our liver and the amount that we make depends on a number of factors that sadly you can’t change – your age, sex and genetic make-up (family history and genetic origin). The good news is that by making simple alterations to your diet and lifestyle you can still impact greatly on your cholesterol levels and long-term heart health.
Factors that you can change include whether you smoke, your weight, your blood sugar levels, intake of foods high in saturated fat, and your activity levels. 20% of the cholesterol in our bodies comes from your diet and whilst cholesterol is naturally present in small amounts in foods such as egg yolk, shellfish and offal (liver, kidney), health experts agree that it is saturated fat (found in full fat dairy products, fatty meats and hidden in cakes and biscuits) that is the major contributor to raised cholesterol levels. (Web link Eating for Health/Eatwell plate/Saturated fat)
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Myth 8-Avocados aren't a healthy choice for good cholesterol levels.
False – There are two myths that can be dispelled here. Firstly, avocados are not a vegetable but a fruit, and contrary to what you may have heard they are not bad for your health and can be enjoyed as part of a heart healthy diet. Whilst avocados are higher in fat than most fruit and vegetables, it is cholesterol lowering monounsaturated fat. What’s more, avocados are a good source of vitamin E, fibre, blood pressure lowering potassium and half an avocado counts as one of your recommended 5-a-day fruit and vegetables portions.
Top tip – Use in salads and of course as a key ingredient in the ever popular dip guacamole!
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Myth 9-Nuts are a healthy snack choice for someone with high cholesterol.
Nuts are a good choice of snack because they are rich in a wide range of heart healthy vitamins (brazil nuts are rich in selenium, almonds are rich in calcium and hazelnuts are rich in vitamin E) and minerals and high in fibre. They are also a source of monounsaturated fat, which is good news for your cholesterol.
So it's fine to eat nuts as a snack, as part of a healthy balanced diet. But remember, nuts are high in calories which can make you put on weight if the energy is not burnt off during exercise, so try not to eat too many – around 1oz/25g a day in cooking and as a snack. Try to also avoid salted varieties and give your blood pressure some help at the same time.