Foods That Lower Cholesterol, Snacks

When you are first diagnosed with high cholesterol, your first thought is that you will never be able to eat anything that tastes good ever again. You also assume that snacks are totally out of the question. Fortunately, that is not true. There are many healthy snacks that don't raise your LDH cholesterol (bad) and some that actually raise your HDL cholesterol (good). Dieticians recommend that you have at least two snacks a day.

These are some of the snack foods that can lower cholesterol.

Nuts, while high in fat, have been proven to lower LDH cholesterol and to raise HDL cholesterol. A recent study showed that having two servings of pecans a day did just that for the majority of participants. The nuts with the lowest saturated fat contents are almonds and hazelnuts; walnuts are also low in fat. Two ounces of nuts is about a handful and makes for a satisfying snack. You can also grind up the nuts and add them to smoothies or sprinkle them on top of your cereal. You can also mix the nuts with dried fruits. Roasting nuts enhances the flavour also. All you need to do is spread some nuts out on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes at 350°F.

These recipes offer some alternative to just plain nuts:

Almond Trailblazer mix

Honey Spiced Hazelnuts

Walnut Granola

Low-sodium pretzels are also a good low cholesterol snack to have when you want the satisfying crunch you get from potato chips. You can get many flavours of pretzels to satisfy any craving. They are good for those people who cannot eat nuts due to allergies. Pretzels contain little or no cholesterol; the basic ingredients of the pretzel are wheat flour, water, brown sugar and yeast. They are also baked, not fried.

A tasty looking recipe:

Honey Cinnamon Pretzels

Popcorn is another good snack for those who want to lower their bad cholesterol. It is a good daily source of fibre (which some say can lower your bad cholesterol) and is low in calories and fat. Three cups makes a satisfying and healthy snack. Of course, you want to avoid smothering it in butter and adding salt. You can add your own flavours to the popcorn if you wish; there are many low-fat shakers available in flavours such as green onion or cheese.

This is an easy-to-follow recipe for making the perfect popcorn, you can leave out the butter and the salt:

Perfect Popcorn

Other low cholesterol snacks include cut vegetable strips with a low-fat dip such as salsa, all fruits, fat-free gelatin, low-fat yogurt and vanilla wafers.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that the advice in this article should in no way replace that of a licensed physician's and that nothing is necessarily guaranteed to lower cholesterol. Consult your doctor if you think you might have high cholesterol

Foods That Lower Cholesterol: Snacks by Susan Keeping is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.