Having high cholesterol is quite common in the US. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 adult Americans have this condition – making it a popular condition that people are focused on improving.
Unfortunately, while many people know the risks associated with having high cholesterol, including an increased risk of stroke, many people do not know how to lower or manage their levels, keeping them at risk for some unsavory outcomes.
While medication and exercise can certainly help improve cholesterol levels in some cases, dietary choices can have a profound impact as well. And while many people know that living off of fast food burgers and fries isn't the best thing to do when they are managing high cholesterol, there are some less-obvious eating habits that may be negatively impacting their cholesterol levels that they may be doing every day.
If you are trying to manage your cholesterol level via dietary choices, here are seven eating habits to avoid if you have high cholesterol, according to registered dietitians. Read on, and for more on how to eat healthy, don't miss 7 Healthiest Foods to Eat Right Now.
Shutterstock
It may sound intuitive to eat low cholesterol foods when you are trying to reduce your cholesterol level, but according to Sarah Pflugradt, MS, RDN, CSCS, owner of Sarah Pflugradt Nutrition. "There isn't enough evidence to support that [reducing] dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol." In fact, the data is so weak surrounding this link that this recommendation is no longer included in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Instead, she suggests people focus on reducing saturated fat and increasing fiber intake to reduce cholesterol levels.
Losing weight, regaining it, and repeating this pattern over and over again can have adverse effects on cardiovascular risk factors, Cara Harbstreet, MS, RD, LD of Street Smart Nutrition, explains. "Adults, especially women, who weight cycle through dieting tend to have worse HDL and LDL profiles (even in 'normal' BMI categories) according to NHANES data when compared to adults who remained weight stable even at higher weights."
Your best bet is to follow a sustainable weight management plan and stick with it.
Shutterstock
While different meats can be a natural source of protein, vitamins, and minerals, certain cuts can contain large amounts of saturated fat. And when saturated fat is "consumed in excess, this can adversely affect cholesterol levels," Jinan Banna, PhD, RD explains.
If you happen to be a carnivore and skipping meat is not an option, sticking to leaner choices like flank steak is your best bet.
Shutterstock
"Eating too many added sugars can lower your 'good' HDL cholesterol," Anya Rosen, MS, RD, LD, CPT explains. From candies to cakes to even the sugar you add to your coffee, this ingredient can add up over the day and can play a negative role on your overall health. Opt for fresh fruit if you need the taste of sweetness with no added sugars.
But skipping fiber, especially soluble fiber, can make lowering cholesterol challenging, explains Elysia Cartlidge, MAN, RD, highlighting that the soluble variety can help lower the LDL "bad" cholesterol in many people.
"Be sure to regularly include foods like oats, barley, apples, beans, flaxseed, and chia seeds to ensure that you're getting sufficient amounts of soluble fiber to keep those cholesterol levels in check," Cartlidge advises.
Shutterstock
While eating a diet rich in saturated fat isn't the best idea when it comes to cholesterol management, there are other fats that can actually be important additions to your diet. Foods that are rich in healthy fats, including nuts, avocados, seeds, and fish should be encouraged
Shutterstock
Your mom wasn't wrong when she encouraged you to eat your vegetables every day. Eating a diet rich in certain vegetables, especially cruciferous veggies like broccoli and cauliflower, has been linked to lower LDL cholesterol levels. Perhaps there actually is something to the cauliflower trend after all!
If you and your partner have made a ritual out of running to Tim Hortons for each other but have recently cut back to save money, good news, your salvation has arrived in the form of an Ontario casting call.
The non-union project requires zero acting experience but both you and your loved one will need to be comfortable being filmed.
"We're seeking real duos including couples, friends, and siblings, under 60 years of age, in the Greater Toronto Area who love coffee and donuts. We are open to different types or relationships, including the imperfect ones," an excerpt from the casting call reads.
Anyone looking to apply will be required to attend a COVID-19 test and wardrobe appointment between January 10-11, as well as be available for filming on January 13-14.
However, it is worth noting that you will only be required on one of those days if selected.
If you book, you will receive $75 for the COVID-19 test, $75 for the wardrobe appointment, and $750 for the shoot day, with an additional $1,500-$2,000 waiting for you if your footage is selected.
"Casting Director Andrew Deiters is excited to see some interesting and unconventional looks, and relationships- including siblings, friends and couples," Groundglass told Narcity.
Just Eat have announced Starbucks is finally available for delivery, just in time for Christmas!
This means you can get their mouth-watering range of signature seasonal specials delivered right to your home or office door.
This phased roll-out should reach the majority of Cafes right across Ireland early in the new year.
But what's on the menu? Well, it'll of course feature everyone’s favourite specialty coffees, iced beverages, sweet treats and light bites.
Not to mention the iconic Starbucks Christmas menu.
Just Eat customers in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Louth will be the first to benefit from this exciting roll-out.
Whether it’s a sip on the all-new Caramel Waffle Latte or a nibble on the delicious Cranberry and Brie Toastie, there’s something for everyone.
Amanda Roche-Kelly, Managing Director Just Eat Ireland said:
'We’re thrilled to be launching our partnership with Starbucks here in Ireland and offering the Starbucks Delivery menu to our Just Eat customers right across the country.'
'In our ever-changing environment this phased roll-out is serving up a much-needed sense of normality with Starbucks’ best specialty coffees now delivered hot (or on ice) to your home office desk daily.'
'Over the past number of weeks, we’ve announced significant investments in support of local industry, expanding our courier network in anticipation of the continued growth in demand for delivery, with our new Starbucks Delivery menu offering the best range to our Just Eat customers to suit any occasion.'
'Just Eat and Starbucks have a shared vision to deliver convenience and as the Irish coffee culture continues to grow, through this exciting partnership we’re offering Just Eat customers what they want, when and where they want it.'
How often do you come across a mouthwatering, incredibly good-looking meal on social media, then find yourself saying "I need to make that." - because I do it all the time.
The issue? I almost never have the motivation to cook (I'm sure you can resonate with this to some degree).
As a result of my "laziness" (as my parents living on the opposite side of the country would say), I'm notorious for spending a rather unreasonable amount of money eating out at restaurants, taking food out, going through drive-thrus, you name it; oftentimes, I'd do anything just to not have to cook at home.
But, truth be told, I can whip up some pretty great dishes in the kitchen.
The other night, something crazy happened - I, very miraculously, found the motivation to cook at home. And it did. not. disappoint. The best part? It was a rather guilt-free dish that is super easy to make, which might even motivate me (and maybe even you) to stop spending so much money on take-out.
If you're looking for the motivation to eat at home - and you like Italian food - then you need to try making my version of Eggplant Parmesan.
Make It With Maxx: Eggplant Parmesan - With A Twist
Growing up, one of my favorite meals was a very classic Italian dish, Eggplant Parmesan.
When it comes to my own cooking, I've always been intimidated to cook with eggplant. I'm not fully sure why, but I've just convinced myself that any eggplant dish I make will never be as good as an Italian restaurant's version of, dare I say, my all-time favorite dish.
But, I'm so happy to report that I was wrong for ever convincing myself of such a thing - so wrong.
So, next time you find yourself or somebody in your household asking "What's for dinner tonight?" Try making this classic, easy-to-make Italian dish - with an incredible game-changing twist.
(Warning: mouths will be watering during and even after this meal).
Growing up, one of my favorite meals was the very classic Italian dish.
Really,even to this day, if you were to ask me what I'd want my last meal on Earth to be, I'd still say eggplant parm; it's just one of those dishes that I've grown to love just as much (if not, more) than I did when I was younger.
When it comes to my own cooking, I've always been intimidated to cook with eggplant. I'm not fully sure why, but I've just convinced myself that any eggplant dish I make will never be as good as an Italian restaurant's version of, dare I say, my all-time favorite dish.
But, I'm so happy to report that I was wrong for convincing myself of such a thing - so wrong.
You know what they say... good mood, good food.
Give this recipe a try and let me know how you liked it by shooting me a message on our New Country 99.1 app!
Northern Colorado Pizza Reviews
Here's Where You Can Find The Best Breakfast In Northern Colorado
There is no quick fix for running injuries. Healing them takes time and patience, but the right nutrition strategies can speed up the process so you can get back on the road as soon as possible. If you’re currently sidelined with an injury, take a look at your diet to see if there’s any room to optimize your nutrition for injury recovery, and check out these tips to help you get better faster.
Don’t cut calories
When dealing with an injury, many runners are tempted to cut back on their caloric intake because they’re not expending as much energy as they would if they were still training, but this is a mistake. Restricting calories can slow down the recovery process, so make sure you continue eating, focusing on good nutrition (more on that in a minute). Depending on the severity of the injury, you may even need more calories, so if you’re unsure how much you should be eating while recovering from an injury, talk to a dietitian with a background in sports nutrition for guidance.
Protein helps build and repair muscle tissue, so when you’re trying to heal an injury it’s important to get plenty of protein in your diet. This is even more crucial if the injured area has to be immobilized for any length of time because you’re at a greater risk for muscle loss. Leucine, one of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA’s) that make up complete protein is particularly important because of its ability to stimulate muscle protein synthesis compared to other amino acids. Foods high in leucine include chickpeas, soy-based products, eggs, chicken, salmon and beef.
Eat carbohydrates
For a similar reason to cutting calories, some runners think they should eat fewer carbohydrates while they’re injured since they don’t need the fuel for their runs. When you eat too few carbohydrates (and again, not enough calories), you risk your body having to dip into your protein stores for energy. This prevents the protein you eat from being used to repair an injured muscle, which slows down the recovery process.
Increase your omega-3 intake
Omega-3 fatty acids help decrease recovery time by reducing inflammation, so make sure you’re including plenty of fatty fish and seafood (like salmon, tuna and sardines), nuts, seeds and fortified products like eggs, yogurt and milk.
Get plenty of vitamin C
The sunshine vitamin is a mandatory co-factor in collagen formation, which is a main component of bone, muscle and skin. Eating more vitamin C will help improve your body’s collagen formation, thus expediting your injury recovery.
If your injury is bone-related, you should aim to increase both of these bone-building nutrients. Calcium is crucial to building and repairing bone, but without adequate vitamin D, your body will have difficulty absorbing the calcium from your diet. It can be difficult to get enough vitamin D in the winter months, so focus on eating plenty salmon, eggs and fortified foods, and talk to your doctor about adding a supplement to your diet.
Eat plenty of fruits and veggies
When you’re recovering from an injury, you want to get as many vitamins and minerals as possible because when you support your overall health, you support the injury recovery process. Do your best to make sure you’re including a variety of fruits and vegetables in your diet every day to ensure you aren’t missing out on anything.
A clutch of fishing villages dot the coast near Kilifi, north of Mombasa in Kenya. The waters are home to parrot fish, octopus and other edible species. But despite living on the shores, the children in the villages rarely eat seafood. Their staple meal is ugali, maize (corn) flour mixed with water, and most of their nutrition comes from plants. Almost half the kids here have stunted growth — twice the national rate.
In 2020, Lora Iannotti, a public-health researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, and her Kenyan colleagues asked people in the villages why the children weren’t eating seafood, even though all the parents fish for a living; studies show that fish and other animal-source foods can improve growth1. The parents said it made more financial sense for them to sell their catch than to eat it.
So, Iannotti and her team are running a controlled experiment. They have given fishers modified traps that have small openings that allow young fish to escape. This should improve spawning and the health of the overfished ocean and reef areas over time, and eventually increase incomes, Iannotti says. Then, for half the families, community health workers are using home visits, cooking demonstrations and messaging to encourage parents to feed their children more fish, especially plentiful and fast-growing local species such as ‘tafi’, or white spotted rabbitfish (Siganus canaliculatus) and octopus. The scientists will track whether children from these families eat better and are growing taller than ones who don’t receive the messaging.
The aim of the experiment, says Iannotti, is to understand “which sea foods can we choose that are healthy for the ecosystem as well as healthy in the diet”. The proposed diet should also be culturally acceptable and affordable, she says.
Iannotti is wrestling with questions that are a major focus of researchers, the United Nations, international funders and many nations looking for diets that are good for both people and the planet. More than 2 billion people are overweight or obese, mostly in the Western world. At the same time, 811 million people are not getting enough calories or nutrition, mostly in low- and middle-income nations. Unhealthy diets contributed to more deaths globally in 2017 than any other factor, including smoking2. As the world’s population continues to rise and more people start to eat like Westerners do, the production of meat, dairy and eggs will need to rise by about 44% by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
That poses an environmental problem alongside the health concerns. Our current industrialized food system already emits about one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. It also accounts for 70% of freshwater use and 40% of land coverage, and relies on fertilizers that disrupt the cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus and are responsible for much of the pollution in rivers and coasts3.
A child is weighed as part of a study into sustainable fishing and child nutrition in a village near Kilifi Creek, Kenya.Credit: Lora Iannotti
In 2019, a consortium of 37 nutritionists, ecologists and other experts from 16 countries— the EAT–Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health — released a report4 that called for a broad dietary change that would take into account both nutrition and the environment. A person following the EAT–Lancet reference diet would be ‘flexitarian’, eating plants on most days and occasionally a small amount of meat or fish.
The report provoked a flurry of attention towards sustainable diets, and some criticism about whether it was practical for everyone. Some scientists are now trying to test environmentally sustainable diets in local contexts, without compromising nutrition or damaging livelihoods.
“We need to make progress toward eating diets that have dramatically lower ecological footprints, or it’ll be a matter of a few decades before we start to see global collapses of biodiversity, land use and all of it,” says Sam Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, a global consortium in Boston, Massachusetts, that studies the health impacts of environmental change.
Emissions on the menu
Producing food generates so much greenhouse-gas pollution5 that at the current rate, even if nations cut all non-food emissions to zero, they still wouldn’t be able to limit temperature rise to 1.5 °C — the climate target in the Paris agreement. A large proportion of emissions from the food system — 30–50%, according to some estimates — comes from the livestock supply chain, because animals are inefficient at converting feed to food.
In 2014, David Tilman, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota in Saint Paul, and Michael Clark, a food-systems scientist at the University of Oxford, UK, estimated that changes in urbanization and population growth globally between 2010 and 2050 would cause an 80% increase in food-related emissions6.
Source: M. Springmann et al. Nature562, 519–525 (2018)
But if everyone, on average, ate a more plant-based diet, and emissions from all other sectors were halted, the world would have a 50% chance of meeting the 1.5 °C climate-change target5. And if diets improved alongside broader changes in the food system, such as cutting down waste, the chance of hitting the target would rise to 67%.
Such findings are not popular with the meat industry. For example, when in 2015, the US Department of Agriculture was revising its dietary guidelines, which happens every five years, it briefly considered factoring in the environment after researchers lobbied the advisory committee. But the idea was overruled, allegedly in response to industry pressure, says Timothy Griffin, a food-systems scientist at Tufts University in Boston, who was involved in the lobbying effort7. Nonetheless, people took notice of the attempt. “The biggest accomplishment is it brought a lot of attention to the issue of sustainability,” he says.
The EAT–Lancet Commission, which was funded by Wellcome, a UK-based charity, helped to build a stronger case. Nutritionists reviewed the literature to craft a basic healthy diet composed of whole foods. Then the team set environmental limits for the diet, including carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and the use of fresh water, land, nitrogen and phosphorus. Breaching such environmental limits could make the planet inhospitable to humans8.
They ended up with a diverse and mainly plant-based meal plan (see ‘Healthy eating’). The maximum red meat the 2,500-calorie per day diet allows in a week for an average-weight 30-year-old is 100 grams, or one serving of red meat. That’s less than one-quarter of what a typical American consumes. Ultra-processed foods, such as soft drinks, frozen dinners and reconstituted meats, sugars and fats are mostly avoided.
Sources: Intakes, Ref. 4; Costs, Ref. 12
This diet would save the lives of about 11 million people every year, the commission estimated4. “It is possible to feed 10 billion people healthily, without destroying ecosystems further,” says Tim Lang, food-policy researcher at the City University of London and a co-author of the EAT–Lancet report. “Whether the hardliners of the cattle and dairy industry like it or not, they are really on the back foot. Change is now inevitable.”
Many scientists say the EAT–Lancet diet is excellent for wealthy nations, where the average person eats 2.6 times more meat than their counterpart in low-income countries, and whose eating habits are unsustainable. But others question whether the diet is nutritious enough for those in lower-resource settings. Ty Beal, a scientist based in Washington DC with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, has analysed the diet in unpublished calculations and found that it provides 78% of the recommended zinc intake and 86% of calcium for those over 25 years old, and only 55% of the iron requirement for women of reproductive age.
Source: Ref. 6
Despite these critiques, the diet has put environmental concerns front and centre.“Until EAT–Lancet, I don’t think it had been at the top of policymakers’ minds that sustainability should be integrated into this global conversation about dietary change,” says Anne Elise Stratton, a food-systems scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The diet is not a one-size-fits-all recommendation, stresses Marco Springmann, a food scientist at the University of Oxford who was part of the EAT–Lancet core modelling team.
Since the report was published, public-health scientists around the world have been studying how to make the diet realistic for people the world over, whether an overweight adult or an under-nourished child.
Rich diets
Nutrition researchers know that most consumers do not follow dietary guidelines. So some scientists are exploring ways to convince people to adopt healthy, sustainable diets. In Sweden, Patricia Eustachio Colombo, a nutrition scientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and her colleagues are quietly testing a sustainable diet in schools. Their work piggybacks on a social movement that began in Scandinavian countries called the New Nordic Diet, which promotes consumption of traditional, sustainable foods such as seasonal vegetables and free-range meat.
Eustachio Colombo and her colleagues used a computer algorithm to analyse existing school lunches at a primary school with about 2,000 students. The algorithm suggested ways to make them more nutritious and climate-friendly, such as reducing the amount of meat in a typical stew and adding more beans and vegetables. The children and parents were informed that lunches were being improved, but did not know details, Eustachio Colombo says. Most kids did not notice, and there was no more food waste than earlier9. The same experiment is now being re-run in 2,800 children.
“School meals are a near unique opportunity to foster sustainable dietary habits. The dietary habits we develop as children, we tend to stick to them into adulthood,” Eustachio Colombo says.
The diet is very different from the EAT–Lancet one, she says. It is cheaper and includes more starchy foods such as potatoes, which are a staple of Swedish cuisine. It is also more nutritious and culturally acceptable, she says. “This highlights the importance of tailoring the EAT-Lancet diet to the local circumstances in each country or even within countries,” she says.
Across the Atlantic, some academics and restaurateurs are trialling the diet in low-income settings. In Baltimore, Maryland, a collaboration between a catering business and a restaurant, both forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic, started taking donations and providing free meals based on the EAT-Lancet diet to families who live in ‘food deserts’ — areas where there is little access to affordable, nutritious food. One meal had salmon cakes with mixed seasonal vegetables, Israeli couscous and creamy pesto sauce.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore surveyed 500 people who tried the meals and found that 93% of the 242 people who completed the survey said they either loved or liked it10. The downside? Each donation-funded meal cost US$10 — five times the amount currently provided by the US food-stamp programme.
“It’s very clear that if you have a huge shift in diets, you could swing the environment impact for the better, but there’s cultural barriers and economic barriers to that,” says Griffin.
Workers pack meals at the Alma Cocina Latina restaurant in Baltimore.Credit: Dave Cooper/NYT/Redux/eyevine
Hard to stomach
For researchers exploring future diets in some low- or middle-income nations, one hurdle is finding out what people are eating in the first place. “It’s literally like a black box to me right now,” says Purnima Menon at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Delhi, who has been studying diets in India. The data on what people are eating are a decade old, she says.
Getting that information is crucial, because India ranks 101 out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index and has the greatest number of children who are too thin for their height.
Using what’s available, Abhishek Chaudhary, a food-systems scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, who was part of the EAT–Lancet team, and his colleague Vaibhav Krishna at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich used a computer program and local environmental data on water, emissions, land use and phosphorus and nitrogen use to design diets for all of India’s states. The algorithm suggested diets that would meet nutritional requirements, cut food-related emissions by 35% and wouldn’t stress other environmental resources. But to grow the required amount of food would require 35% more land — which is impractical in the overcrowded nation — or higher yields. And food costs would be 50% higher11.
Healthy, sustainable diets are expensive elsewhere, too. The dietary diversity advised by EAT–Lancet — nuts, fish, eggs, dairy and more — is impossible to access for millions of people, says Iannotti.
In fact, for the average person to eat the diet in 2011 — the most recent data set available on food prices — would have cost a global average of $2.84 per day, about 1.6 times higher on average than the cost of a basic nutritious meal12.
Rickshaw drivers in Dhaka, Bangladesh stop for lunch. The cost of a ‘planetary health’ diet is beyond the reach of many in south Asia.Credit: Munir Uz zaman/AFP/Getty
There are other impracticalities. Take restrictions on meat, for instance. In places with nutrient deficiencies and where the diet’s prescribed foods are not available, animal-source products are a crucial source of easily bioavailable nutrients in addition to plants, Iannotti says. In many places in low-income nations, farming systems are small-scale and include both crops and domesticated animals, which can be sold in times of family need, says Jimmy Smith, director-general of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi.
“The farmer in the highlands of Ethiopia doing dairy has three or four animals in his or her backyard, and each of these animals is a member of the family, they have names,” he says.
Menon says that for now, scientists in low- and middle-income regions are more concerned about delivering nutrition than preserving the environment. The FAO has organized a committee to redo the analysis of EAT–Lancet to make it more globally inclusive, says Iannotti, who is part of the committee. The global assessment will be published in 2024. “They don’t feel as if it was entirely balanced or holistic in its review of the evidence,” she says. “Let’s go further and make sure we have evidence from around the world.”
The way to find sustainable diets in poor nations is by working closely with communities and farmers, as in Kilifi, scientists say. Clark, having mapped out diet at a global scale using model-based projections, thinks that food-system scientists now need to find the local adjustments and fixes to get people to eat better.
“People working in food sustainability need to go into communities and ask, ‘hey, what’s good for you?’” he says. “And then, given that baseline, how can we start working towards outcomes that those communities are interested in.”
