These and other functions fall to serum cholesterol, which is a waxy, fat-like compound, that circulates in the bloodstream (also called lipid). Your liver makes about a gram each day, which is all your body needs.

Dietary cholesterol is found only in animal products. Your body doesn’t need this cholesterol, and with the exception of strict vegetarians you’ll eat varying amounts of it.

Many factors like exercise, genetics, gender, and other components of your diet contribute to how your body processes dietary cholesterol.

Some people can eat large amounts and have normal blood levels, while others eat very little and have high blood cholesterol.

What you eat seems to account for about 20% of the cholesterol in your body, with the remaining 80% produced by your liver.

Good Vs. Bad Cholesterol

The two major transporters of cholesterol are low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and high-density lipoproteins (HDLs).

LDLs tend to drop cholesterol in your artery walls, which leads to atherosclerosis (hardening of your arteries) and an increased risk of heart disease.

HDLs, collect cholesterol from the artery walls and other tissues and take it to your liver to be metabolized and eliminated from the body.

This is why LDLs are called the “bad” cholesterol and HDLs the “good.”

Eating To Keep Your Cholesterol In Check!

There’s no surprise that what you eat influences the levels of cholesterol and other fats in your blood.

Dozens of studies state that a diet high in animal products and other saturated fats tend to elevate cholesterol levels, when compared to the low levels found in people whose diet are largely made up of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Foods That May Raise Your Cholesterol

• Hard margarine and vegetable shortening, which are high in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids.
• Cookies, cakes, pastries, and chocolates, especially those made with saturated tropical oils, or partially hydrogenated oils.
• Full-fat dairy products, such as cheese, cream, and butter; all are high in saturated fats.
• Fatty meats and meat products, such as marbled beef, pork and lamb chops, hamburgers, bacon, frankfurters, salamis, and other cold cuts.

source: marcilall

A diet rich in vitamin, minerals and fatty acids can help reduce aggression, improve mood and prevent depression. So why aren’t more people taking omega-3 capsules? The best way to curb aggression in prisons? Longer jail terms, maybe, or stricter security measures? How about more sports and exercise? Try fish oil. How can children enhance their learning abilities at school? A well-balanced diet and safe, stimulating classrooms are essential, but fish oil can provide an important extra boost. Is there a simple, natural way to improve mood and ward off depression? Yoga and meditation are great, but–you guessed it–fish oil can also help do the trick.

A diet rich in vitamins, minerals and fatty acids like omega-3 is the basis for physical well-being. Everybody knows that. But research increasingly suggests that these same ingredients are crucial to psychological health too. And that’s a fact a lot of people seem to find hard to swallow.

The relationship between nutrition and aggression is a case in point. In 2002, Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at Oxford University, investigated the effects of nutritional supplements on inmates in British prisons. Working with 231 detainees for four months, Gesch gave half the group of men, ages 18 to 21, multivitamin, mineral and fatty-acid supplements with meals. The other half received placebos. During the study, Gesch observed that minor infractions of prison rules fell by 26 percent among men given the supplements, while rule-breaking behaviour in the placebo group barely budged. The research showed more dramatic results for aggressive behavior. Incidents of violence among the group taking supplements dropped 37 percent, while the behavior of the other prisoners did not change.

Gesch’s findings were recently replicated in the Netherlands, where researchers at Radboud University in Nijmegen conducted a similar study for the Dutch National Agency of Correctional Institutions. Of the 221 inmates, ages 18 to 25, who participated in the Dutch study, 116 were given daily supplements containing vitamins, minerals and omega-3 for one to three months. The other 105 received placebos. Reports of violence and aggression declined by 34 percent among the group given supplements; at the same time, such reports among the placebo group rose 13 percent.

Gesch is quick to emphasize that nutritional supplements are not magic bullets against aggression, and that these studies are just “promising evidence” of the link between nutrition and behavior. “It is not suggested that nutrition is the only explanation of antisocial behavior,” he says, “only that it might form a significant part.”

But Gesch is just as quick to emphasize that there is no down side to better nutrition, and in prisons in particular, the cost of an improved diet would be a fraction of the cost of other ways of addressing the problem of violence among inmates.

Still, the menu in British prisons hasn’t changed in the five years since Gesch published his results, even though the former chief inspector of prisons in the UK, Lord Ramsbotham, told the British newspaper The Guardian last year that he is now “absolutely convinced that there is a direct link between diet and antisocial behaviour, both that bad diet causes bad behavior and that good diet prevents it.”

Yet the effect of nutrition on psychological health and behavior is still controversial, at least in part because it is so hard to study. Our moods, emotions and actions are influenced by so many factors: everything from our genes to our communities to our personal relationships. How can the role of diet be isolated among all these competing influences? That’s exactly why Gesch conducted his study in prisons. In a prison, there are far fewer variables, since all detainees have the same routine. Do the results of the inmate trials reach beyond the prison walls? Gesch thinks so: “If it works in prisons, it should work in the community and the society at large. If it works in the UK and in the Netherlands, it should work in the rest of the world.”

Another place improved nutrition seems to be working is in the city of Durham in northeastern England. There, Alex Richardson, a physiologist at Oxford University, conducted a study at 12 local primary schools. The research examined 117 children ages 5 to 12, all of whom were of average ability but were underachieving. Instructors suspected dyspraxia, a condition that interferes with co-ordination and motor skills and is thought to affect at least 5 percent of British children. Possible signs of dyspraxia may include having trouble tying shoelaces or maintaining balance, for example. The condition frequently overlaps with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and is part of a range of conditions that include autistic-spectrum disorders.

Half the group of children in Richardson’s study was given an omega-3 supplement for three months; the other half received an olive oil placebo. The results: Children given the omega-3 supplements did substantially better at school than those in the control group. When it came to spelling, for example, the omega-3 group performed twice as well as expected, whereas the control group continued to fall behind.

Richardson came to the study of nutrition through neurology. Her interest was sparked by the rapid rise of conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia. The incidence of these disorders has increased fourfold in the past 15 to 20 years. “These disorders overlap considerably,” she says, “but a real solution is rarely offered. A dyslexic child is assigned a special teacher. A kid with dyspraxia is sent to a physical therapist. One with ADHD is prescribed Ritalin. And you’ve got to learn to live with autism.”

But as Richardson writes in They Are What You Feed Them: “There is always something that can be done. Don’t ever believe it if anyone tells you otherwise.” One of the things that can be done, according to Richardson, is to boost your child’s intake of omega-3. Of course, Omega-3 is not the only answer to ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia or other psychological or behavioral disorders, which also include Alzheimer’s disease. Studies like Richardson’s suggest, however, that it may play an important role in stimulating the brain, keeping it healthy and helping it ward off debilitating conditions.

And it looks like we need all the help we can get. Behavioral dysfunctions like ADHD are currently the fastest-growing type of disorder worldwide. Twenty years ago, no one had even heard of ADHD. Today, everyone knows a kid who is taking Ritalin. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of people with psychological disorders will double by 2020–and that around that time, depression will surpass heart and vascular disease as the No. 1 most preventable cause of death. The WHO adds that psychological disorders account for four of the 10 most common causes of disability and that a quarter of the general population will be affected by them at some point in their lives.

Diet could well play a central role in all this. The quality–and quantity–of the food we eat has increased dramatically over the past century or so. But we are eating more and more processed foods, which contain less and less of the essential minerals, vitamins and fatty acids that appear to be so crucial for mental health. Tomato juice, for example, contains 64 percent less vitamin C, 49 percent less carotene and 17 percent less niacin than a fresh tomato.

Gesch says we “seem to have made unprecedented changes to human diets in recent years with little or no systematic evaluation of the effects on our brain or behavior.” He wants to reverse “high-calorie malnutrition” by encouraging nutritionists, physicians and educators to concentrate not just on calorie intake but on the consumption of nutritional components like vitamins, minerals and fatty acids as well.

In our distant evolutionary past, we all had much more varied diets. Research among native tribes in remote areas suggests that our hunter-gatherer forebears consumed between 100 and 150 different types of plants during the course of a year. Nowadays, our grain consumption is heavily dominated by wheat. Soy oil accounts for more than 80 percent of the fat Americans consume. Health authorities recommend a minimum of 400 grams (14 ounces) of vegetables and fruit each day, but lots of people don’t even come close to that. And even those who do eat lots of fruit and vegetables often don’t get the full nutritional benefit because intensive farming has depleted the soil of key minerals.

So what’s a consumer to do? Eat fish. Working with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), American physician and psychiatrist Joseph Hibbeln compared data on fish consumption with figures on depression and murder in a large number of countries around the world. Fish are a rich and ready source of omega-3. In countries in which fish consumption is low, Hibbeln found the likelihood of suffering from depression was up to 50 times greater than in countries where it is high.

Some 6.5 percent of New Zealanders suffers from severe depression; these citizens also eat very little fish. In Japan, where fish consumption is high, 0.1 percent of the population suffers from depression. Manic depression (bipolar disorder) is rare in Iceland, which has the highest per capita fish consumption in the world, but is quite common in Brazil and Germany, where people don’t eat as much fish. Hibbeln also found that, on average, the risk of being murdered is 30 times greater in countries where fish consumption is low compared to countries where it is high.

Cultural and other factors certainly influence these statistics, but the comparisons are nevertheless illustrative. Overall, in subsequent trials, Hibbeln found that depressive and aggressive feelings diminished by about 50 percent after taking fish-oil capsules for two to four weeks. Based on this and other research, the WHO concluded in a report last year: “Certain dietary choices, including fish consumption, balanced intake of micronutrients and a good nutritional status overall, also have been associated with reduced rates of violent behavior.”

How can something like omega-3 have such an impact on behavior and psychological health? Communication between the nerve cells in the brain depends on the circulation of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. Low serotonin levels are associated with an increased risk of suicide, depression and violent behavior. Omega-3, a long, flexible molecule, appears to facilitate the circulation of neurotransmitters like serotonin in the brain, thus boosting communication among nerve cells. And nerve cells that talk a lot with each other make new connections in the brain, a process crucial for learning. Less flexible fatty acids than omega-3, though, do not as efficiently support the chatter.

Hibbeln’s work has shown that the brain tissue of Americans is different from that of the Japanese. American cell membranes contain much higher levels of the less flexible omega-6 fatty acids; Japanese cell membranes are significantly richer in omega-3. Processed foods happen to be rich in omega-6, and Americans eat a lot of them. These omega-6 fatty acids seem to have displaced the omega-3 fatty acids found so abundantly in fish, of which the Japanese are so fond.

Other studies have found that depressed patients and children with ADHD and autism are deficient in omega-3. So some scientists speculate that this change in the fatty acids contained within our brains could be causing the modern rise in psychological disorders.

Although more and more research underlines the importance of nutrition for psychological wellness, these findings have not been widely translated into action. “Politicians, policymakers and business leaders keep asking for more research involving thousands of people, like the trials done for every new drug,” Richardson complains. “But I say, We have done the uncontrolled experiments now [in the general population] for quite some time.” Pharmaceutical firms have few incentives to organize their own studies, since omega-3 is derived primarily from fish oil–and you can’t patent fish.

This frustrates many scientists in the field. “Do we want to wait for more studies that confirm these findings, or do we want to do something today about the level of crime and aggression in our societies?” asks Stephen Schoenthaler, a sociologist at California State University at Stanislaus, in Turlock, California, who has studied the link between food and behavior for the past 25 years and led several studies among prisoners and schoolchildren showing the social benefits of a healthier diet.

It’s not all good news, though. Consumers should watch out for manufacturers that make exaggerated claims about these nutritional supplements. “Never use supplements as a substitute for a good diet,” counsels Richardson. “The key thing that most people seem to have forgotten is that food is not just fuel, it is nourishment. Food is not just a source of energy that one can consume on the run. A healthy diet needs to provide a minimum of essential nutrients in a dosage recommended for daily use.”

A multivitamin and mineral supplement is a good “insurance policy,” Richardson says, and 500 mg of omega-3 every day is not a bad idea either. But buyer beware: Not all supplements are good supplements, so seek the advice of a qualified professional before deciding which supplement, if any, is right for you.

It almost sounds too good to be true, but research is beginning to confirm that vitamins, minerals and fatty acids can reduce aggression and improve psychological well-being. That could be a simple recipe for a more peaceful world.

Without protein it’s impossible for you to stay alive. Protein builds your skin, muscle, bones, blood, your organs – everything! Hormones, enzyme, and antibodies are all proteins and all of these proteins must be constantly replenished in order to keep your body functioning properly.

I guess it’s good that most foods you eat contain protein with the exception of fruit, which don’t really give you an effective amount. You probably don’t have a problem finding protein but are you eating quality protein?

All protein is made up of 20 building blocks called amino acids. Unfortunately your body can’t create nine of these essential acids, which means you have to get them from food sources.

The highest quality proteins contain enough essential amino acids to meet your nutritional needs which you can get from animal sources like egg whites, milk, meat and fish.

On the other hand vegetables and grains are significant sources of the essential amino acids, each one alone is often short one essential amino acid. Therefore, if you eat no animal products you must learn how to combine your protein sources. For example, cereals are low in the essential amino acid lysine, while legumes (like peas, beans, and lentils) are low in methionine. A meal containing both rice and beans will have all of the essential amino acids you need.

So how much protein is enough?

46 g for adult women is recommended. It’s also recommended that 10% to 35% of your total caloric intake come from protein. (The rest come primarily from carbohydrates and fats.)

Is there any danger to eating too much protein?

If you get your protein from animal sources your intake of saturated fat and cholesterol may increase. In addition nitrogen has to be released to help metabolize the protein and has to be flushed away by your kidneys, which takes away some valuable minerals like calcium, magnesium, and zinc.

High-protein diets like Atkins, Scarsdale, or Stillman diets are alluring since you’ll see rapid weight loss because of the water lost in excreting protein metabolites. In spite of this, these diets aren’t safe or long-term, because your body begins to break down its own protein to make the glucose necessary for your brain to function and your body to have enough energy. At the end of the day you lose valuable protein and the unwanted fat stays.

Good Sources of Protein

* Skim Milk
* Fish/Chicken/Meats
* Egg Whites

Grains

* Bread/Bagel/Cereal/Pasta/Rice
* Beans/Peas/Lentils

Starchy Veggies

* Potatoes
* Corn
* Lima Beans

Fibre Veggies

* Asparagus
* Mushrooms
* Tomatoes
* Beets
* Peppers
* Broccoli
* Spinach
* Cabbage
* Carrots
* Turnips
* Eggplant
* Green beans
* Zucchini

Poor nutrition has been linked to heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and many other diseases. We can reduce our risk by choosing well-balanced meals. Balance, moderation and variety are the keys to eating well to maintain a sound mind and body.

Fast foods and eating out in restaurants have become so prevalent in our society that eating healthy meals are somewhat difficult. Understandably, it is easier to take the kids to a fast food restaurant or drive through after an exhausting day at work. No doubt there are more convenient choices but they are killing us and our families. Like with any change, it is challenging to adopt a new way in the early stages, but not impossible.

First begin with a plan. You have heard many times that if you fail to plan, then, you plan to fail. It is the same with eating. Plan your meals at the beginning of the week. Breakfast is as simple as whole grain cereal, whole-wheat toast, fruit, low-fat yogurt, 100% juice, and skim milk. Pack your lunch the night before so you will not make excuses or be tempted to run to the hotdog vendor. Pack leftovers from dinner, a veggie or tuna sandwich with low-fat mayo, fruit or soup. Purchase ready-made salads [without dressing mixed in] for a quick and easy dinner. Store readily available vegetables with low fat dip for easy snacking. Children love to dunk food into dips, this is a great way to get them to eat a healthy snack.

Prepare meals that can be stored in the freezer such as casseroles, pasta dishes, etc. Before you go to work, take a dish out of the freezer to thaw out. When you come home from work, all you need to do is throw the thawed dish in the oven for about 35-45 minutes and dinner is served without much effort.

Eating healthy on a regular basis does take planning and discipline. At first, it may seem rigorous because you are learning how to prepare meals. Grocery shopping may also feel like a chore. But, within a couple of weeks, it will become a habit and second nature. You will feel more in control knowing exactly what ingredients are being used. Therefore, you do not have to worry about hidden fats or too much salt, that are likely present in most restaurant foods.

Be a good role model for your family. You will be serving them by providing both healthy meals and educating them about leading a healthy lifestyle. This is huge because you are setting the example for your kids and passing it on to their kids, and down the line. So, if there was any evidence before of family history health problems, feel well that you decided to take charge and end the madness or at least decrease the risk for your family’s future generations.

The goal here is to enjoy nutritious and tasty foods. Remember, moderation is key so do not be too obsessed or restrictive as you may sabotage your success resulting in binge eating. Many of you can probably relate to forcing yourself not to eat a certain type of food such as a cookie, only to find a whole box devoured later. Have the cookie to prevent overeating down the road.

Plan your meals to incorporate servings of protein, whole grains, fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. RDA suggest for daily intake of carbohydrates: 55-70%, fats: 20-30%, proteins: 15-20% and the World Health Organization suggests 40-50 grams of fiber daily. A varied diet is essential to good health. Concentrate on foods that are high in vitamins, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, unrefined carbohydrates, high fiber, low in sugar, low in fat, low in sodium, and limit alcohol consumption. Eating well and limiting your use of salt, sugar, caffeine, fats, can reduce stress and disease. American Cancer Society has stated that as much as 60% of cancer is related to diet.

You must start by making a decision to live a healthy, less stressful life by developing good eating habits. Come up with a plan and include your family by asking for feedback. Find out what healthy foods they want to try. Get them involved. It is easier to change when you are supported. Eating well will help you manage stress, reduce risk of disease and illness, control weight, and provide energy.