Everyone has heard of the dangers of high cholesterol, but how do you know where it is hiding? The sad fact of the matter is that it hides in many of the foods we love the most. If you are trying to lower your cholesterol and eat a heart healthy diet, this article will help you figure out where the bad cholesterol is and how to avoid it. Most of us want to live a longer, healthier life, and avoiding high cholesterol food is one step down the path of better living.

How do foods become foods high in cholesterol? To be classified as a high cholesterol food they must meet two main criteria: a large quantity of saturated fat, and a large quantity of cholesterol. It is the dynamic duo that makes the food bad for you. Cholesterol alone simply puts the food on a "watch" list. In combination with saturated fat, the food is moved to the "bad cholesterol" category.

Saturated fat and cholesterol both come from animal products. This means your favorite steak is on the list of high cholesterol foods. In fact, a lot of the foods we all love to eat can be found on the list. Either they come from an animal that has a high fat to meat ratio, like cows, they are products prepared with animal fat, like chips, or they simply have a high saturated fat content, like some nuts.

One thing that makes finding high cholesterol foods and avoiding them so frustrating is the "X" factor: those foods that count as high cholesterol foods, but not because they meet the dynamic duo requirement. Instead, they make the list because of the way they interact with your liver. You can eat these foods, thinking they are fine, and in the end they make your liver react by producing more cholesterol, something your body already has enough of.

Some examples of high cholesterol foods include beef (those Delmonico Rib Eyes that are so tasty on the grill are near the top of the high cholesterol food chain), eggs, cheeses, butter, organ meat (think kidney and liver), processed snack foods like cookies and muffins, fatty nuts, dairy products like cream and half and half, pork and processed salty snack like chips. You can read the full list of high cholesterol foods at the Harvard School of Health's web site: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats.html. The University of Utah's Health Sciences Center takes it one step further by not only listing the foods that are high in cholesterol, but also explaining how you can modify some of them to fit your low cholesterol needs.

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