Search - The Dictionary of Sodium, Fats, and Cholesterol

Foods are listed alphabetically by brand name or by the name of the food. This dictionary lists the total fat, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and sodium content of severl thousand food items. These nutrients have been receiving increasing attention by nutritionists and the medical profession because of their possible relationship to atherosclerosis (coronary heart disease). Of course, diet is not the only factore to be considered in heart disease. Other considerations are heredity, obesity, high blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood lipids, cigarette smoking, lack of exercise, stress, and certain ailments such as diabetes.

Patients with coronary disease and high blood pressure are often placed on diets in which one or more of these nutrients are controlled. Since physicians now believe that the conditions leading to early heart attacks are the result of a liftime of habits that predispose individuals to such attacks, they recommend that certain changes in dietary patterns be made also in early childhood.