All Low-Fat Diets Aren’t Created Equal

A low-fat diet is a low-fat diet, right? Not exactly. You can eat reduced-fat frozen lasagna and low-fat (but high-sugar) chocolate chip cookies and still stay within the nutritional guidelines of getting 25 to 35 percent of your daily calories from fat—and you may lose weight and lower your cholesterol in the process. However, relying too heavily on processed convenience foods doesn’t offer the artery-healthy results of sticking to a whole-foods, plant-based diet.

Fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains are naturally low in fat and high in fiber—and they pack almost double the cholesterol-lowering punch of prepared, processed foods, including the low-fat kind, according to a new study.

Researchers tracked 120 healthy adults aged 30 to 65 found to have high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL, the “bad” kind). After a month of eating either a diet that included a number of reduced-fat prepared foods or one with lots of plant-based foods, the whole-foods eaters came out on top with a 9.4 percent drop in their LDL levels compared to a 4.6 percent decrease in the convenience-food eaters.