Key Foods to Avoid If Your Cholesterol Is High

If you want to lower your cholesterol, the very first step should be to start avoiding foods that are high in cholesterol. If you're constantly adding more cholesterol to your body, it'll be very hard to reduce your cholesterol levels no matter what else you're doing.

Here are a few of the most important foods to start avoiding.

==> Livers, Hearts, Intestines

Avoid eating any kind of animal organs. This includes chicken livers, hearts or bone marrow.

Though these foods aren't frequently used in Western cooking, they're extremely common in Asian cooking as well as some South American dishes.

==> Butter, Margarine, Lard

Toast with butter is a staple of most people's breakfast. Many people also often prefer to cook with butter rather than oil, because it smells and tastes richer.

Unfortunately, butter and margarine both have extremely high cholesterol contents. If you're trying to lower your cholesterol, it's best to say "no" to butter and butter-replicas.

==> Processed Meats: Spam, Bologna, Sausages

Processed meats are one of the worst cholesterol offenders in the standard American diet.

Processed meats usually contain ground-up meat from all the parts of the animal that couldn't be used in other products. In other words, the fattest, dirtiest and least healthy aspects of the animal are what's packed into sausages, spam, etc.

On top of that, processed meats are chock full of sodium and oils. In other words, processed meats are your worst enemy if you're trying to lower your cholesterol.

==> Deep Fried Foods

Deep fried foods like French fries, Kentucky Fried Chicken and mozzarella sticks are also terrible for cholesterol.

Deep fried foods work by essentially being dunked in oil (fat) and letting them sit there until they cook. Naturally, the foods cooked this way are going to absorb a lot of fat and cholesterol.

In addition to oil absorption, the oil that deep fried foods are cooked in have often been sitting there for hours, causing the fats to turn into trans-fats.

==> TV Dinners, Microwavable Meals

Finally, avoid microwavable meals of all sorts.

Microwavable meals and frozen meals are packed full of preservatives and other unhealthy chemicals. They're also extremely high in calories and tend to have a lot of hidden sugar.

Instead of eating microwavable dinners, it's much healthier to either cook in yourself or find a sandwich shop or other healthy quick food joint in your neighborhood.

==> Desserts

Finally, many desserts are also packed full of sugars, fats, diary and all kinds of other high cholesterol ingredients.

If you have high cholesterol, does that mean you can never enjoy ice cream or chocolate again? Not necessarily. Low-fat, low-calorie alternative ice creams and chocolates are still a valid option.

These are some of the most important foods to avoid if you have high cholesterol. Again, the first step to getting your cholesterol down to healthy levels is to stop taking in more unhealthy cholesterols.