Most of you are on the right track. It is very much about eating real food and locally produced foods if at all possible (your own back yard is the best.)
However, it is also more than that. Humans never evolved to eat the things we eat now. Agriculture, meaning the cultivation of grain crops, is only 10,000 years old. It takes millions of years for evolutionary progress to be made. We humans evolved our large brains over 2-3 million years by being opportunistic carnivores. We have the digestive structure to digest animal proteins, not cellulose(plants). Herbivores have multi-chambered stomachs or specially designed digestive apparati like the cecum in horses. (The remains of our cecum is commonly called an appendix it is often removed to prevent poisoning) These are necessary to digest plant matter (grasses). As a result of the cultivation of grain crops, we as a species started eating grains we weren't designed to eat in quantity. The only animal on earth evolved to eat grains in fact is...guess....birds.
These new seed and vegetable oils and shortenings are even more of an offense. Do you know what you have to do to get oil out of a seed or veggie? I do and I don't want to be consuming something that has to be chemically extracted, bleached, deodorized, etc to make an oil. Did you know that Canola is a GMO of Rape Seed, which was processed for use in wood finishes. Rape Seed is highly toxic.
Soya, and all things associated with soya that aren't fermented first is just evil. Don't go there!! Did you know that soya beans were orignally a waste crop? It was planted to fix nitrogen to the soil and plowed under in the fall.
Cholesterol is so important for the body that every cell in the body is capable of making it. It is used to repair damage done to the body though improper diet, stress, life and living. The biggest cause of damage done to the body is from over consumption of sugar. Sugar acts like sand in the blood stream causing all kinds of damage to the vessels. Cholesterol is like the spackle that makes temporary repairs while the cells repair themselves. LDL and HDL aren't cholesterol at all but lipoprotiens that the cholesterol is carried around the body on. LDL carries the cholesterol from the liver to the damaged tissues needing it and HDL carries the used cholesterol from the tissues back to the liver for recycling. A better indicator for CVD is triglycerides. You want low, low, low TG's. Eating saturated fat naturally lowers TG's, raises HDL, and changes your LDL profile from small dense to large fluffy.
I could go on and on but (you'd all wind up with headaches at the end) healthy living and eating is easy if you keep it simple.
1. Eat real food how mother nature presents it to you.
2. Cut out the grains, flour and other gluten grains being the worst offenders.
3. Eat mostly from animal sources. Beef, pork, chicken, fish, seafood, butter, eggs....you get the picture.
4. Learn to cook again. Its fun, delicious and will bring the family back to the kitchen.
5. If you want to loose weight, go as low carb as possible.
6. Don't eat any forms of refined sugar (sugar, HFCS, honey, maple syrup, agave, sugar substitutes...blah, blah, blah). If you have a hankering for something sweet, eat a piece of fruit.
7. Most of all, have fun discovering the world of spices and seasonings, fresh fruit and veg, farmers markets, local meat producers. This way of living healthy is challenging but very satisfying. The thing I have the hardest time finding is raw milk. Being Canadian, we have very strict milk regulations and I don't want to own my own milking animals....way too lazy for that.
One more thing I almost forgot to mention is that there are no indications that high cholesterol is dangerous at all for women...in fact the studies show that the higher our cholesterol, the longer lived. If you have a loved one taking statins...please do you best to get them to stop. Statins (Crestor, Lipitor...etc) are very dangerous and mostly ineffective. The only group that has been minimally helped by taking statins is men under 65 who have already had a heart attack. At the very least if you can't get them to stop, insist that they take CoQ10 with them as a protective measure.
I've slowly been learning this stuff over the past year and the sites I frequent are doctors blogs. If you are interested in learning more I'd be happy to include those sites. And include some book titles you may be interested in.
Best regards,
Becky