Let's face the facts: obesity is bankrupting America. The two combine to form an epidemic unlike anything the country has ever seen. By current measures, sixty four percent of american adults are overweight or obese. Better than one in four are obese. In the last fifteen years, those numbers have gone up by a third, and if current patterns hold, better than three in four American adults will be overweight or obesese by the middle of this coming decade.
With obesity comes a host of health problems, such as heart disease, gastro-intestinal disease (including stomach and colorectal cancer), and diabetes. Signifiers like high cholesterol and triglycerides can tell doctors part of the story when it comes to your medical history, and if you want to avoid the fate of too many overweight people - that of disease and bankruptcy - you'll take your doctor's advice and start exercising and eating good cholesterol foods.
See, good cholesterol foods can do much more than just lowering your cholesterol: They can help increase you energy, regulate your moods and help you live a more active, healthy lifestyle. good cholesterol foods can effect you and your quality of life on a variety of levels. They don't just lower your cholesterol or help you get thinner; they help you become a more complete human being.
So the first thing to understand about good cholesterol foods is that, if it's not an animal product, it doesn't have cholesterol. That means good cholesterol foods are stuff like salads, fruits, nuts and grains. It means you need to eat fresh fruits and or vegetables with every meal. It means going for the egg white omelette instead of the whole egg omelette, and it means cooking said omelette in olive oil instead of butter.
It's also important to understand that, though all "flesh" contains cholesterol, some cholesterol is better than others. Salmon, for instance, has an honored place in the list of good cholesterol foods. It's high in omega-3 fatty acids, which your body uses to raise your high density, or HDL, cholesterol, while lowering your low density, or LDL, cholesterol. However, be aware that farm raised salmon is much, much less beneficial to your health than wild caught salmon.
Even so, any kind of salmon is better for you than red meat. While I enjoy a steak as much as the next guy, there's no denything that red meat intake is one of the leading causes of high cholesterol, and in no way belongs on the list of good cholesterol foods.