Day 11: 99 mg cholesterol: Hainan chicken rice and Nyonya fried fish

Today we estimate to have eaten 99 mg cholesterol in Hainan chicken rice, fried mackerel and a cup of chicken stock. I also found out that I should start counting saturated fats. Luckily we don’t buy anything with trans fats.

Breakfast consisted out of the usual cooked rolled oats with almond milk. Today no banana. Last 10 days I did some research about LDL and found that one way of lowering your bad cholesterol is having at least 10 mg of soluble fibers. According to the mayo Clinic, that’s reached by eating about 1 and a half cup of oatmeal with banana.

I found out that almonds are extremely healthy as well, as they contain polyunsaturated fats that seem to help lowering your cholesterol. According to caloriecount.about.com, 1 serving of 24 almonds (28.3 gram or 1 oz, for breakfast I blend 16 almonds in my almond milk) contains 14 grams of total fat, out of which:

• "bad" saturated fat 1.1 gram,
• monounsaturated fat 8.7 gram and
• "good" polyunsaturated fat 3.4 grams.

I also read that to lower your cholesterol, your diet should both contain less than 200 mg cholesterol AND less than 7% of your daily calorie intake should be of saturated or trans fats.

At this moment I just try to keep my daily cholesterol intake below 200 mg. I am not counting my saturated fat intake for 3 reasons:

• more than not, all this counting is a lot of work, I rather spend my time writing my cholesterol diary than doing calculations.
• it’s difficult to say how much fat is there in the piece of chicken you just bought, and even more difficult to estimate the amount and type of fats used when eating out
• being conscious in choosing low cholesterol foods implies that we do decrease our daily intake of animal fats. Trans fats are easily to spot on the nutrition labels of the food you buy, and our rule is: if it contains trans fat, we don’t buy it. Saturated fats weren’t on my radar, but from now I will keep in mind that in stead of always going for nuts as tidbits, fruits are an option to not go overboard with saturated fats.

If simply lowering my cholesterol intake won’t lower my cholesterol levels, then after my next bloodtest, I will start counting saturated fat as well.

Today’s cholesterol intake

For lunch: my wife’s Hainan chicken rice. According to nutrition.com.sg, 1 portion of chicken rice contains 48 mg of cholesterol. Before cooking the rice, you saute onion, sjalot and garlic in some olive oil until fragrant. Add the rice and cook in the homemade chicken stock that remains after boiling the chicken. The chicken is boiled in water with ginger and springonion. Serve the stock with some freshly cut coriander leaves.

The fresh cucumber was marinated in salt and lime and for the chili sambal you mix long red chilli peppers with garlic, ginger, lime, salt and a bit of olive oil.

For tea: a few small bananas.

For dinner: Nyonya fried fish, which is hardtail mackerel filled with a sambal made of dry and fresh chillies, tamarind, onion, sjalot, garlic, and ginger. Not finding how much cholesterol a hardtail mackerel contains, we estimate it contains as much as the Spanish mackerel mentioned at nutrition.com.sg: 1 Spanish mackerel contains 44 mg cholesterol.

For dinner also a cup of easy corn chicken soup: basically boil potatoes and corn in the chicken stock and you are ready to go. According to nutrition.com.sg, skimmed chicken stock doesn’t contain any cholesterol. However since the stock was freshly made, we couldn’t remove all the fat on top (unlike storing it overnight and as such the fat hardens and is easily removed completely). According to caloriecount.about.com 1 cup of homemade chicken stock contains 7 mg cholesterol, so let’s use that as our estimate.

Daily cholesterol intake: estimated 99 mg

• breakfast: 0 mg cholesterol
• lunch: 48 mg cholesterol (chicken)
• tea: 0 mg cholesterol
• dinner: 51 mg cholesterol (44 mg fish and 7 mg chicken stock)

The estimations of nutrition.com.sg feel a bit on the low side, However, with a margin of 100% to keep below the daily recommended 200 mg cholesterol, I do feel save 🙂

If I was to follow all the dietary recommendations I read today, I should not only count my daily dietary cholesterol (which is well manageable as long as you don’t eat out), but I should also make sure not to consume to much saturated fats nor trans fats. Eating in we do make sure not to buy anything containing trans fats. Counting the exact saturated fats a day would be a challenge, but we make sure not to cook in butter, nor ghee and keep milk, cheese and cream out of our diet as well.