Bye-Bye to Bacon?

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Living a healthy life is important to me and important to my primary employer, The Republic of Tea, as well. As such, they recently offered us a free health screening that involved a more in-depth blood work-up than your doctor would normally do during a physical. As a person who lives a fairly healthy and balanced lifestyle I was certainly not expecting my result to indicate I have borderline high cholesterol.

More than anything else that could have come out from those test results, high cholesterol really bugged me. Why? Because it directly affects my eating habits. Unfortunately many Americans suffer from high cholesterol, a leading factor in heart disease which is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. High cholesterol is often the result of poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. A work out freak, sedentary I am not. But it is true I love to eat, so if my cholesterol is high something is going to have to change in my daily eating habits.

The truth is I have seen these results before, about five years ago. At the time I was as perplexed as I am today, but with a skinny healthy father who also suffers from high cholesterol I decided I would probably need to take this cholesterol thing seriously sooner rather than later.

The first thing I did was swap out my morning fried egg for a bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal is high in soluble fiber which is believed to limit the absorption of cholesterol by the intestines. This is a habit I continue to this day. I’ll cook my oatmeal on the stove with dried fruits (also high in fiber) then top it with some sliced almonds, a drizzle of agave nectar, and a bit of soy milk. Almonds, like walnuts and some other nuts, are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids which are believed to reduce blood cholesterol. Altogether, my oatmeal had become a heart healthy and delicious way to start the day.

But here I am, five years later with an oatmeal habit and a workout obsession and I still need to lower my cholesterol. How do I go about lowering my cholesterol further when I am already doing so much? I know the answer, I just don’t like it. I’ll need to say bye-bye to bacon, ciao to cheese. I’ll need more olive oil, less butter; more grilling and poaching, less frying; more protein coming from low animal fat sources like fish and chicken, less beef and lamb.

I implemented the plan the same day as I got the results. For dinner I knew I would need to punch up the flavor of my grilled chicken while avoiding as much fat as possible. The Mediterranean region and its cuisine have been heralded over the years because of the population’s low occurrence of heart disease. With its abundance of olive oil and bright herbaceous flavors, I knew that some Mediterranean influence would be a good direction in which to take my chicken dinner make-over from bland to delicious.

I lightly coated the boneless and skinless chicken with olive oil and seasoned it with dried oregano and basil. While the chicken was grilling up I made a quick tzatziki-style sauce using non-fat Greek yogurt, cucumbers, and garlic. Vegetables are an important source of soluble fibs along with whole grains, so sneaking both of those in at once with a quinoa pilaf seemed like a good way to round out the meal. High in fiber and protein, quinoa is a technically a seed but it cooks up just as fast as white rice while looking a bit like couscous. Cooking quinoa in low-sodium chicken stock gives it more flavor. Sautéing vegetables like onion, celery, and zucchini to mix in with the cooked quinoa rounded out my low fat, low cholesterol dinner with a tasty and wholesome side dish.

The next day I took my test results to my doctor and he told me that although my bad LDL cholesterol was a little high, my triglycerides were really low and my cholesterol ratio was even better than optimal. Bottom line, I have nothing to worry about right now when it comes to cholesterol and my diet.

But, with twenty four hours to ponder my diet, I am thinking that making these cholesterol friendly changes aren’t such a bad thing if I want to maintain my healthy heart down the road. So maybe I don’t need to say bye-bye to bacon completely. But maybe I don’t need to keep it as par stock in my refrigerator either. More flavor from herbs and a lighter hand with the butter means I’ll have more years in my life to enjoy the occasional bacon treat.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 4 small boneless skinless chicken breast halves
• salt and pepper
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 3/4 cup non fat Greek yogurt
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 2 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1/4 cup olive oil, PLUS
• 1 teaspoon olive oil, PLUS
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 medium zucchini