Choosing and Preparing Sweets and Snacks to Lower Cholesterol
Choosing and preparing sweets and snacks carefully in order to help lower cholesterol can seem like a difficult and demanding task. After all, these comfort foods are your favorites for a reason! They taste delicious, especially after a stressful day. But don't forget the harm that could be going on inside your body. One main negative effect is high cholesterol. A high cholesterol level is an initiator of many health problems, one of the more dangerous ones being heart disease. By being aware of what you're putting into your mouth, it is possible to maintain healthy cholesterol levels with occasional sweets and snacks.
Saturated fats and trans-fatty acids are the main dietary culprits when it comes to high cholesterol levels. The regular consumption of these fats is extremely unhealthy, although they are found in many different foods, especially in our fun snacks and tasty treats. In order to lower cholesterol levels, you must choose and prepare foods that have as little of these fats as possible or none at all.
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Take an inventory of your favorite sweets and snacks. If there are many foods that you make yourself, consider these ways to create a lower-fat, healthier version:
When baking cookies, cakes, and other pastries, try using oils that are polyunsaturated or monounsaturated and can help maintain or lower cholesterol, such as safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, peanut oil, or olive oil.
When preparing recipes that call for eggs, use a liquid egg substitute or egg whites instead of the yolk, as egg yolks are full of saturated fat.
Choose dairy products that are low fat or nonfat, including milk, cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, and cottage cheese.
Pick lean cuts of beef and pork or even go with turkey, chicken, or seafood, if your snacks include meat. These options will provide saturated fat in lower levels that their unhealthy counterparts. And it will be an adventure in the kitchen to see what is created when you work with different ingredients than usual.
Use as many fruits and vegetables as possible in order to snack your way to lower cholesterol. Add veggies instead of meat for a vegetarian spin on an old recipe, or use fruit to make a to-die-for dessert.
If you are a store-bought snack-aholic, there are even ways for you to lower your cholesterol. Check out the nutrition labels of all items before they enter your cart. Anything that contains partially hydrogenated oils, trans-fatty acids, or saturated fats should be a warning sign; limit these severely. Ask the cashier at the fast food restaurant to give you a nutritional information chart to review for fats and just say no to the ones that are high in bad fats and low in nutritional value.
This chart includes many popular snacks and sweets. Try substituting your favorite guilty pleasures for their healthier counterparts every now and then. You may even find yourself enjoying the healthier version better. But remember that just because these new treats are better than their evil twins, that doesn't give you a constant green light for munching. All processed foods have some amounts of fats, cholesterol, or calories and, like everything else, should be eaten in moderation.
The Bad The Better
French fries pretzels, raw veggies with dip
potato chips baked tortilla chips with salsa, air-popped popcorn
cake, cupcakes, doughnuts angel food cake with fresh fruit
ice cream frozen yogurt, sorbet, fruit ice, popsicle, gelatin, pudding
cookies graham crackers, animal crackers, ginger snaps, vanilla wafers
crackers nut or rye crackers
fake fruit pies and pastries fruit leather, frozen bananas with cinnamon or honey, frozen grapes, fig cookies
Brownies, fudge, milk chocolate dark chocolate, nonfat hot chocolate
