Every two years since 1948, more than 5000 residents of Framingham , Massachusetts
Every two years since 1948, more than 5000 residents of Framingham , Massachusetts
Of course there’s a difference between knowing something and acting on it. The citizens of Framingham
Over the years, I’ve hit upon a number of solutions. I still snack on sweets. I don’t turn up my nose at red meat. And I’m always interested in finding ways to exercise less. But my cholesterol is now below 5.5. Here’s how you can do it too:
1) Think fat, not cholesterol. Many people who believe they’re following a low—cholesterol diet really aren’t. Some types of shell—fish, for example, are relatively high in cholesterol, while many baked foods and potato chips have none. Yet if you eat more crabs and prawns, and less of those prepared foods, your cholesterol count can actually fall. The reason is that prepared foods frequently contain tropical oils (coconut, palm and palm kernel) high in saturated fat. And it’s the saturated fat in the food you eat, more than the cholesterol, that is the problem. (Egg yolks and organ meats, incredibly rich in cholesterol, are exceptions to this rule.)Most cholesterol in your body is produced by your cells, Saturated fat signals your cells to make more cholesterol and acts as the raw material for its manufacture. Trim the saturated fat in your diet and you automatically cut the cholesterol in your blood.
Food labels don’t usually list saturated—fat content, but there’s a way to “guesstimate.” Many labels list total fat content, and, although the amounts of saturated fats vary from product to product, I figure that often about half is saturated fat. Roughly speaking，the saturated fats in beef, pork and other red meats are typically a little less than half the total, while those in dairy products are a little more. Some tropical oils, however, are more than three—quarters saturated fat!
How much fat is too much? A cheeseburger, a large order of chips and a milk shake can contain nearly 28 grams of saturated fat, about as much as the average person, without heart problems, should consume in a day. Yet many of us eat 50 to 75 grams, with frequent binges of 1 00 grams or more.
2) Substitute good ingredients for bad．Most of us don’t need dieting classes; we need cooking classes. The meals we eat come from a short list of unwritten recipes— an “oral cookbook” —passed down from generation to generations: macaroni—and—cheese casseroles, bacon and eggs, hamburgers and chips, lasagna, fried chicken and meat. Many of these recipes originated in an age very different from our own, when people engaged in manual labors 12 hours a day, six days a week. Their bodies required a high—fat diet; ours don’t.
In theory, one family member can change his diet, but in practice almost no-one is willing to prepare two different sets of meals day in and day out. However, you can remove saturated fat from your favourite family recipes.
Diet books frequently suggest that you throw out all the family’s favorite meals. We could substituted soft diet margarine for butter, skim milks for whole (saving ten grams of fat for every half a litre! ), egg whites for whole eggs, nonfat yoghurt for sour cream, whole-grain cereal crumbs for bread crumbs and vegetable oils for shortening.
It’s easy to cut down. For dinner, instead of a 250— gram sirloin, fried potatoes, peas and a piece of pie, substitute a 170— gram portion of lean steak, a baked potato topped with soft diet margarine, peas, and low fat oatmeal biscuits. You will have eaten eight grams of saturated fat instead of 37. Yet few of us would finish such a meal feeling deprived.
3) When you eat out，improvise．Many people eat deep-fried foods five lunches a week, and that’s enough to kill anyone. Some fast food restaurants fry foods in highly saturated oils or beef tallow. The result is that chicken and fish get drenched in more fat than the choicest cuts of beef contain. A typical fast—food chicken-patty sandwich has more fat than half a liter of ice cream, and just six chicken nuggets can have over 20 grams of fat. Some fried vegetables absorb even more fat than fish and meat do.
If asked, chefs will usually prepare vegetables without butter, sour cream or cheese sauces and will broil your chicken instead of frying it. On your potato, try cooked chopped broccoli, fresh diced tomatoes or nonfat salad dressing. If no low—fat entrees are offered, improvise.
4) Take a walk．If you exercise, you can diet less. Exercise stimulates the production of a protein called HDL, which removes fat from your blood and may actually scrub plaque deposits off the walls of your arteries.
Most people like jogging, but the problem is finding time to jog, or to swim or play tennis. So we could park on the far end of the car park, climb stairs instead of waiting for a lift and walk to the store to buy newspapers.
Most of the benefit of exercise—whether running, brisk walking, cycling or aerobics—comes from very little effort. So even the most confirmed couch potato, by taking a brisk half—a—hour walk four or five times a week, can cut his odds of dying of a heart attack in half.
5) Know the point spread. Get your cholesterol count checked. Depending on your age, weight and medical history, it should fall below 5.1, with 5.1 to 5.9 a borderline reading. If your total cholesterol is over 5.1, you may have enough HDL to counteract it.
Two months after limiting saturated fats in your diet, have your cholesterol checked again. If it hasn’t dropped to a healthy level, set a lower daily limit and check your cholesterol 60 days later. If the number doesn’t look respectable, ask your doctor for help. You can start to change the odds that you’ll suffer a heart attack or stroke if you take the steps outlined above.
