Saturated fats that are so common in western nutrition should be strictly limited if one wants to lower cholesterol. Increasing awareness to the food that you eat is important to your success to lower cholesterol since the cholesterol that enters your body from the food that you eat accounts for more than 25% of the overall cholesterol in your body. There is a direct connection between the number of grams of cholesterol in most processed foods to the saturated fat amount. So consequently by lowering the volume of saturated fat from the foods that you eat you also directly lower your cholesterol.

Saturated fat is, in chemical terms, a fat that is saturated with hydrogen atoms that unlike unsaturated tends to be solid in room temperature. Animal fats are in fact saturated fats. But there is also saturated fat from vegetable sources like palm or coconut oil. Hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated fats that are considered to be most harmful fats found in processed foods are also called trans fatty acids as they are manufactured by turning unsaturated fats into saturated fats.

Unlike unsaturated fats (mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated like olive oil) that help lower blood cholesterol, saturated fats are know to significantly promote to elevated LDL cholesterol (low density lipoprotein) also known as the bad cholesterol for its tendency to stick to artery walls and cause atherosclerosis (a dangerous condition when arteries become hard and narrow blocking blood flow to the heart and brain).

To effectively lower cholesterol one must first limit the amount of saturated fat coming from the food that we eat to help reduce the dietary cholesterol. Consuming foods loaded with saturated fats not only adds to the amount of cholesterol ingested in the body, but also enhances the production of cholesterol by your liver. When there is excess of LDL cholesterol, it deposits within artery walls and in tine hardens into dangerous hard plaque that narrows the blood vessels to the heart and brain and the result is often heart attacks and even fatal strokes.

To lower cholesterol one must first become educated as to the sources of saturated fats and cholesterol found in the food that we eat. One must carefully look at food labels and choose foods that are high in unsaturated fats over saturated fats and in any case avoid the consumption of foods that have more than 20% saturated fat. Choosing unsaturated fats over saturated fats (found in butter, cheese, fatty meats and ice cream) and putting together a low fat and low in cholesterol diet rich in vitamins and nutrients from fresh fruit and vegetables, combined with regular exercise will help to significantly and naturally reduce cholesterol in the blood an thus minimize the risk for heart disease and strokes.