Cholesterol is a colossal problem in Western countries and the problem is spreading from older people to younger individuals and from Westerners to Easterners. Health authorities all around the world are warning of the heart disease time bomb that is ticking away. That is all well and good, but the problem is is that not many individuals are listening until it is rather late.

One of the biggest problems is that individuals do not think before purchasing a meal or a snack – if they are hungry, they will simply buy a hamburger or a pie. Another big problem, is that the generation born in the Seventies did not learn how to cook, but instead depended on junk food. They have also passed that on to their children and so it goes on.

This state of affairs has led to the rise in heart disease. So, what can be done about it? Well, the best thing would be for individuals to go back forty or fifty years and begin again, but since that is not possible, it is useful to look into that earlier lifestyle and see how we differ nowadays from it.

Forty or fifty years ago, there were junk foodstuffs, but most individuals ate them just very infrequently. They went home to a cooked meal concocted either by their mother or their wife or they cooked it themselves. It is not very important who cooked it, the fact that it was cooked at home is the significant bit.

How often do you eat take-aways and how frequently do you eat home cooked meals – meals that were made from fresh, raw ingredients?

There were fewer labour-saving devices in those days, so people worked harder. ‘Harder” I said, people probably work longer hours now, but they do not expend so much calories. In those days, people walked further and worked more strenuously and consumed meals made from raw ingredients.

We do not do that now and those are the foremost reasons why we are all having problems with heart disease. OK, you have to be pretty far gone for it to be too late. You can make lifestyle alterations now and you will recover or you can take tablets and help to make the pharmaceuticals even richer.

If you want to do something about your circumstance, it is quite simple. The first thing to do is avoid red meat, full-fat dairy produce like milk, cream, butter and cheese and stop eating junk food, such as hamburgers, store-bought pizzas, hot dogs, pies, pasties, crisps and chips entirely. This will vastly reduce most people’s sources of the prime culprits of high cholesterol – namely, saturated fats and hydrogenated,or trans, fats..

The second thing to do is raise your intake of fresh fruit and vegetables. You should also eat more peas, beans, lentils, grains and nuts. Soya is also very (very) good for you.

Avoid eating animal skin of all kinds, because a lot of the fat content is in the skin and try to replace red meat dishes with those made using fish, chicken and tofu.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with low cholesterol diet recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

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