As part of your plan to lower cholesterol, you must first focus your efforts on stepping into a low cholesterol diet. Your diet must also be low in saturated fat that is known to elevate the Low Density Lipoprotein levels in the blood. Low Density Lipoprotein also known as LDL cholesterol or the “bad” cholesterol has a tendency to build up within artery walls and eventually leads to a dangerous condition called atherosclerosis.

The basic rule of thumb in choosing lower cholesterol foods in order to keep the overall cholesterol below 200mg/dl is to start looking at the labels on the food products before you buy them. As all foods are required to have a detailed list of all ingredients including nutritional facts, cholesterol, all types of fats and the recommended daily amounts of nutrients based on an average 2,500-calorie diet. Making intelligent food choices based on the information found on food labels, will help you construct the ideal low cholesterol and low fat diet required as part of your plan to lower cholesterol.

The “nutritional facts” found on nutritional food labels list among several other facts, the number of milligrams per serving of cholesterol and the percent of the total daily amount required. The nutritional label found on most foods, states that based on an average diet of 2,000 calories a day or even for high calorie diets, the maximum daily amount of cholesterol you should consume should not exceed 300 mg. Although not all foods will have a detailed breakdown of all nutritional values, especially fresh foods such as eggs, because of the importance of knowing exactly how much fat and cholesterol you will potentially consume from each food product in order to plan your diet in advance, you should always look for detailed nutritional values even among the fresh foods. You should always prefer fresh foods that list the nutritional facts than fresh foods that don’t. When building a well balanced low in cholesterol diet, everything product counts since some food products will have more cholesterol and more saturated fat than what it seems on first impression.

Nutritional claims are another part of the nutritional label are they are written according to federal guidelines. A nutritional claim such as “reduced cholesterol” means the product must have at least 25 percent less cholesterol and less than 2 grams of saturated fat. A nutritional claim such as “cholesterol free” means the product must have less than 2 grams of saturated fat and less than 2 mg cholesterol.

Constructing a low cholesterol and low in saturated fat diet is the first most important step in lowering cholesterol naturally, with drugs or side effects and it all begins by becoming more informative and just looking deeper into the important figures on labels found on most commercial foods.