If you have recently seen your doctor for the results of your cholesterol blood test, then you probably have some questions about your diet, the part cholesterol plays in this diet, and have lots of questions about which foods are able to lower your cholesterol and how you can adapt your recipes to a more cholesterol friendly diet.

Now, consuming a good diet can be very straight forward. First of all you should be eating a diet that is rich in lots of fresh fruits and vegetables (the healthy carbohydrates), as well as protein from legumes (dried beans, peas and lentils), and meats or dairy products.

But this is where it starts getting a little difficult. Animal products, and this includes butter, meat, poultry, eggs and cheese, everything that comes from an animal contain cholesterol, with red meats, egg yolks and butter having the highest cholesterol levels.

For your cooking and recipes, you should try to include some low cholesterol foods, while you also work on lowering the volume of high cholesterol foods.

This will result in a lowering of the risk that you have for heart disease.

The protein that these foods provide is vital for the health of your internal organs, and for building strong tendons and muscles, as well as maintaining hair, blood and bones. So, somehow you still need to have this protein in your daily foods, but it shouldn’t be from high cholesterol foods available. Seafood can also supply you with protein, and seafood is a good source too, especially herring, sardines, and salmon which contain the omega 3 fatty acids that your body also needs.

Milk also has protein, but since it is an animal product it too has fat so you should drink skim milk, or 1% milk in place of whole milk or 2%. If your room mates are used to drinking the higher fat milk, you may get some complaints initially, but given time, if you continue with the healthier choices, they will probably come to adjust to it.

Instead of cooking with butter (animal product), try using olive oil (plant product) instead, in particular the virgin olive oil which is processed less than the light olive oils. In fact the light olive oil refers to its color, and not the number of calories it contains – very misleading since we usually use light meaning less calories.

One way of reducing fat in baking is to use mashed bananas, apple sauce or pureed prunes instead of the fat, and this also increases your fruit in your diet too.

Almonds, walnuts, peanuts and some other nuts are good for you when you are worried about lowering your cholesterol, but only eat a handful a day, or you will be devouring too many calories which is never a good idea.

If you are making hamburgers, you can throw in some oats, as this is a great food to help you lower your cholesterol. Pulses are legumes as they are also called, or more commonly, dried beans, peas and lentils are also good low cholesterol and they contain soluble fibre, as do apples, pears and barley.

There is plenty more about low cholesterol foods as well as low cholesterol recipes here .