Q. My husband and I both take fish oil supplements and Benecol Smart Chews to lower our cholesterol, but our doctor wants us to raise our HDL. I started restricting my carb intake to see if that might have an impact.
Since I have celiac disease, I have to eat gluten-free foods. I was looking for something I could use as a pasta substitute when I found tofu shirataki noodles. They have just enough tofu in them to make the texture like pasta. They are sold in our regular grocery stores and Asian markets.
My husband and I both showed a marked improvement in our HDL levels from the prior year after eating these noodles a few times a week.
There is a bit of a trick to preparing them. Rinse them in very hot water when you take them out of the package and dry them out in a non-stick skillet so they don’t make the sauce too watery. For less than 100 calories, I can have a plate of pasta for lunch and it’s healthy for me!
A. A low-carb vegan diet was tested against a high-carb vegetarian diet (BMJ Open, online Feb. 5, 2014). After six months, volunteers eating the low-carb vegan diet had lost more weight and had better lipid levels than those on the high-carb diet.
The vegan diet included soy products as well as vegetables. This may help explain the benefit you and your husband have experienced from eating noodles made from soy and yams.
You may be interested in our one-hour interview with Dr. Peter Green on the topic of celiac disease, or our discussion with Dr. Eric Westman on the health benefits of a low-carb diet. We have also interviewed Dr. David Perlmutter, author of Grain Brain.
