Eating Avocados May Make Bad Cholesterol Levels Take a Dip

For those who worry about “bad” cholesterol levels, make sure to grab some avocados the next time you’re in the grocery store.

Eating avocados may be a way to tackle high cholesterol.

Researchers found that eating an avocado every day – as part of a heart healthy, cholesterol-lowering moderate-fat diet – can actually improve bad cholesterol levels for people who are overweight or obese.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that people on a moderate-fat diet who ate an avocado every day had lower bad cholesterol than than those on a similar diet who didn’t eat an avocado a day or were on a lower-fat diet.

This doesn’t mean everyone should break out the chips and guacamole.

Corn chips are high in calories and sodium. A better way to eat avocados is to put them in salads and sandwiches and eat them with chicken or fish – lean protein foods.

Researchers used Hass avocados in their study. They tested the effect avocados had on traditional and novel cardiovascular risk factors by replacing saturated fatty acids from an average American diet with unsaturated fatty acids from avocados.

People in the study followed three different cholesterol-lowering diets. The results found that those who ate an avocado every day and followed a moderate fat diet had the biggest drop – 13.5 mg/dL – in low-density lipoprotein, also called “bad cholesterol.”

This same group also had more favorable blood measurements on the avocado diet for total cholesterol, triglycerides, small dense LDL, non-HDL cholesterol and others.

Avocados, which contain monounsaturated fatty acids – MUFAs -, also provide other important nutrients such as fiber and phytosterols, which help keep the body from absorbing cholesterol.

According to researchers, many heart-healthy diets recommend replacing saturated fatty acids with MUFAs or polyunsaturated fatty acids to reduce the risk of heart disease. This is because saturated fats can increase bad cholesterol levels and raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, the news release states.

The Mediterranean diet, includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fatty fish, and foods rich in MUFAs such as extra-virgin olive oil and nuts. Like avocados, some research indicates that these not only contain better fats but also certain micronutrients and bioactive components that may play an important role in reducing risk of heart disease, according to the AHA.

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