The sustainable diet changes that could reduce bad cholesterol | Dr Sarah Berry

so the best way to illustrate I think just how effective food and our diet can be at low cholesterol comes from the portfolio studies and these are key nutrition science experiments showing the power of food in relation to our health and the concept of the portfolio diet isn't very straightforward what you do is replace certain foods in your diet with other foods and ingredients that have been shown to lower cholesterol and it's centered around four key elements it's centered around soy protein plant steriles tree nuts and soluble fiber and did it work absolutely so it was shown to reduce cholesterol by 30% now this is similar to the level of reduction that we see in cholesterol um lowering from medication like statins so 30% that sounds pretty incredible so does Zoe recommend this diet to people with high cholesterol so it is an incredible dietary pattern to follow but there's a catch with a portfolio diet that it's really difficult to follow so it's therefore more of a science experiment showing us what actually is the potential of food in terms of lowering cholesterol rather than something that's really practical I think in the long term now I think there's a more realistic dietary pattern that's also been shown to be effective in reducing cholesterol and this is the Mediterranean diet so I love the concept of the Mediterranean diet which I think was invented by a bunch of nutritional scientists living a long way away from the Mediterranean because I've spoken to a lot of nutritional scientists now and every single one has a slightly different definition uh of what's in it which is probably not surprising when you think that people living in Italy and Greece and Morocco and Israel all think they're eating a Mediterranean diet and if you go on holiday to these places they're eating very different diet um however I think everyone agrees Sarah that it's about eating plenty of fruit and vegetables sort of whole grains nuts and olive oils and then I think people start to argue a lot more about you know fish and lean meat and and dairy products and the exact proportions yeah that's right Jonathan and while it's not quite as drastic at the portf portfolio diet in reducing your cholesterol it's a really sustainable diet that lets you enjoy food that would be cut out if you followed a more restrictive diet like the portfolio and so Sara you know to be clear for people who are listening to this while eating foods like eggs that are high in cholesterol won't necessarily raise your cholesterol there really are foods that can make your cholesterol go up or or down and if so can you explain sort of what those foods are yeah so we know that actually dietary cholesterol so cholesterol that's in the food that we consume actually has only a really small impact on our blood cholesterol levels but what we do know is that saturated fat rich foods and particular types of saturated fat actually can have quite a potent effect on raising our blood cholesterol and these are the kind of fats that are found in red meats for example lots of ultra processed foods such as pastries um and also in some Dairy such as butter and what about carbohydrates because lots of people will be listening to this and saying oh well so I've got high cholesterol so I'm not going to eat any fat and therefore my cholesterol is going to go down which sounds really logical is it correct no um so this is a big mistake I think that lots of people make and unfortunately there's lots of really poor misinformation out there around people with high cholesterol being told to follow a lowfat diet what we do know is that if you consume healthy fats and healthy oils you can actually improve your circulating blood cholesterol levels so rather than worrying about the amount of fat that you're consuming you should be thinking about the types of fat so the types of fat that we know increased cholesterol like I've just said are the saturated fats but we know that the poly and monounsaturated fats that are found in many vegetable oils um nuts and seeds for example can actually reduce our blood cholesterol levels now the problem is is if you take out the fat from Foods so that you choose low fat versions of foods it's got to be replaced with something because fat is actually the component in food that gives the lovely creamy mouth feel it carries much of the flavor so if you strip out the fat you've got to replace it with something that still confers that nice mouth fill and that great flavor to the food quite often refined carbohydrates or sweeteners or other kind of ingredients are added back into the food and we know that these are really bad for us because we know that they impact your liver which is involved in the production like I said earlier of cholesterol but also they increase another type of fat that circulates in your blood which is called triglycerides and we know that this is really unfavorable in terms of cardiovascular disease if it's elevated as well amazing thank you Sarah so I think now that we understand a bit more the you know what what we eat can cause high cholesterol and it could actually be you know a carbohydrate you know or a fat can you be a bit more specific about what a listener should do to change their diet if right now you know maybe um you know their doctor has told them that they have high cholesterol or they know that it's in their family and are there any sort of smart swaps that they could do without completely changing the way that they eat absolutely and I think it's making simple smart swaps as you call them Jonathan that are personalized to your body but also your preferences that are ones that people will most likely stick to and therefore lead to sustained improvements in in blood cholesterol and actually your blood cholesterol can change really quickly from dietary changes so we see changes in our studies as a little as 10 days to 14 days in blood cholesterol so that should really motivate people that you know quick changes but sustainable changes will really have an impact and the kind of things that you could do is to try and eat less red meat and less processed foods because these have the types of fat that we know increase your BL bad cholesterol you could introduce many fiber rich foods such as beans and vegetables and also plant-based protein sources that we know will lower your cholesterol and spreads are also a good substitute for butter since most spreads are made from vegetable oils so they contain these healthy unsaturated good fats that I've talked about the poly and monounsaturated fats although Jonathan this is quite a controversial area and I remember from our previous episode that many of the foods that are high in cholesterol are also high in saturated fat and this may have led to some of the previous misinformation suggesting that it's the cholesterol in some food such as red meat that explains why you know red meat for example is bad for us yeah and with regards to cholesterol Jonathan saturated fats um are what's increasing the bad cholesterol in our blood not that dietary cholesterol yes and so there sort of there could have been this confusion right when they looked at it because some of those Foods happen to have high cholesterol as well and so we now understand I think this is right Sarah like we understand better the mechanisms today and therefore you know the high uh cholesterol in the egg or the meat is now no longer being blamed for it but actually the red meat still in the dock still in trouble uh we just understand that it's sort of different properties of the red meat that causing us us problems is that absolutely so if we think of liver for example liver is um high in cholesterol but also high in saturated fat if we eat lots of liver we'll have an increase in bad cholesterol but it's

Channel: ZOE

Views: 65,244

Keywords: zoe, zoe podcast, gut health, ultra processed foods, tim spector, gut health diet, ultra processed foods documentary, ultra processed food, snacking, breakfast, sarah berry, dr sarah berry, cholesterol

Id: Oc6qtq_KnfI

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024