Heart attack: The three food types cardiologists warn to cut down on to help reduce risk

Fat

Eating too much saturated fats in your diet can raise “bad” LDL cholesterol in a person’s blood, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

“Good” HDL cholesterol has a positive effect by taking cholesterol from parts of the body where there’s too much of it to the liver, where it’s disposed of.

A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body.

For that reason, most nutrition experts recommend limiting saturated fat to under 10 percent of calories a day.