A WORD ABOUT ELEVATED CHOLESTEROL LEVELS: GOOD FATS AND BAD FATS
Fats come in a variety of styles: saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, cholesterol, and fish oils. Some are called good fats, some are called bad fats. The ones that get the worst press are saturated fats and cholesterol, because they are considered most at fault in causing arteriosclerosis. Cholesterol comes only from animals or foods that come from animals, such as milk and eggs. Plants never contain cholesterol. However, although a food such as a coconut contains no cholesterol, its high in saturated fat, which can raise your serum cholesterol. To control your cholesterol level, you should lower your intake of both cholesterol and saturated fat. For example, butter has cholesterol and saturated fat while margarine contains saturated fat but no cholesterol. Therefore, if you eat a lot of margarine, it’s likely that your serum cholesterol levels will rise. Except for coconut oil and palm oil (typically found in commercially prepared cookies and cakes and in some “imitation” dairy products), most saturated fats and cholesterol come from animal sources. It was generally believed in the past that vegetable fats—the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated varieties—are easier for the body to process and cause less disease.
For some people, decreasing dietary cholesterol does not sufficiently lower their serum cholesterol. Some studies indicate that high serum cholesterol is associated with diets high in fats, period, regardless of whether they’re the good unsaturated types or not. A low-cholesterol diet that contains more than 30% fat can stimulate an increase in serum cholesterol by triggering the body’s own cholesterol-making mechanisms. So it makes sense that the easiest way to control your cholesterol level is to watch your intake of total fat, since cholesterol can be produced in the body even by salad oil and peanut butter.
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