The High Protein Breakfast Food That Can Naturally Lower High Cholesterol

Dieticians and other health professionals stress the importance of a good breakfast to start your day strong. When you wake up, you need food to fuel your muscles and brain and break the overnight fast. Without breakfast, you might find yourself low in energy until your first meal, and you're more likely to overeat later as a result.

What you eat for breakfast can make a difference. A cup of coffee and a sugary donut will not only spike your blood sugar, but you'll probably crash after a few hours when the caffeine and sugar wear off. You'll probably also be hungry again. Instead, adding a little protein and fiber to your breakfast will make you feel full and sustain you until lunch.

Avoid the high-fat bacon and sausage if you want to keep your cholesterol down. Processed meats tend to be high in saturated fat, which can raise your LDL cholesterol. A high-protein breakfast dish that might be good for your cholesterol is a healthy version of huevos rancheros. Eating a cup of beans every day can lower your cholesterol.

Beans for breakfast? Of course. Beans are a popular breakfast food in Latin America, Africa, and Great Britain. Huevos rancheros are typically made with eggs, tortillas, beans, and salsa. A 2021 study in The Journal of Nutrition had people with high cholesterol eat either a cup of beans, a half cup of beans, or a cup of white rice every day for four weeks. When the people ate a full cup of beans every day, their total cholesterol levels were significantly lower after four weeks than when they ate white rice. They also lowered their LDL cholesterol.

The study said that the high fiber in beans binds to the bile salts that are made from cholesterol and removes them from the body. Your liver then uses the cholesterol in your blood to make new bile salts. Beans also have resistant starch, which is broken down by the good bacteria in your gut. As a result of this fermentation process, these good bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids that reduce your body's cholesterol production.

The main ingredient in huevos rancheros is eggs. Although an egg has 186 milligrams of dietary cholesterol, that doesn't necessarily equate to cholesterol in your blood. The American Heart Association says healthy people can eat an egg a day as long as their overall diets are low in sodium, saturated fat, and sugar. Older adults can have two eggs. People with high cholesterol or other risk factors for heart disease should consider lowering both dietary cholesterol and saturated fat from their diets.

Some huevos rancheros recipes will add refried beans, which can add loads of saturated fat if they're cooked in lard. Instead, you can cook some beans in olive oil to add some healthy unsaturated fat. Choose any kind of bean you want because most have 10 or more grams of fiber per cup. A cup of cooked black beans provides 15 grams of protein, 15 grams of fiber, and less than a gram of fat. You'll also get 20% of your daily iron, 29% magnesium, and 13% potassium.

Huevos rancheros will also have some sort of salsa, but make sure you go heavy on the fresh tomatoes. A 2013 study in Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, and Obesity found that women who ate two Roma tomatoes a day for 4 weeks increased their HDL cholesterol by an average of 5 points.