The targets · Decision 10 of 17

What food does to cholesterol, and what Snapkin shows

The first advice for people with high cholesterol is to change what they eat. This page shows which changes lower LDL cholesterol, and by how much. It shows which Dutch foods have a lot of saturated fat. It also says what Snapkin can and cannot do for them.

Last updated 24 October 2026.

What lowers LDL cholesterol

Too much cholesterol in your blood can stick to the walls of your arteries. That can lead to a heart attack or a stroke. LDL is one of the numbers your doctor checks. An LDL above 3 mmol/L counts as too high (Dutch Heart Foundation).

The European guideline for cholesterol, ESC/EAS 2019, rates each lifestyle change in its Table 8. A change marked ++ lowers LDL by 5 to 10%. A change marked + lowers it by less than 5%.

Table 8 of the European guideline, the food part How much each change lowers LDL cholesterol, and how strong the evidence is. A is the strongest level.

Change	Effect on LDL	Evidence
Avoid trans fat	5 to 10%	A
Eat less saturated fat	5 to 10%	A
Eat more fibre	5 to 10%	A
Foods with added plant sterols	5 to 10%	A
Lose weight if you are too heavy	5 to 10%	A
Eat less cholesterol	under 5%	B
Move more	under 5%	B

The same guideline says saturated fat should stay under 10% of calories. For people with high cholesterol it says under 7%. It advises 25 to 40 g of fibre a day. It says LDL drops by 0.2 mmol/L for every 10 kg of weight lost. The Dutch Heart Foundation says changing what you eat can lower cholesterol by about 10 to 20%. These effects come from different studies. They cannot be added up.

How big the effects are

Saturated fat. A WHO review by Mensink (2016) combined 74 trials. When 1% of calories came from polyunsaturated fat instead of saturated fat, LDL dropped by 0.055 mmol/L (0.050 to 0.061). With monounsaturated fat instead, the drop was 0.042. With carbohydrate instead, it was 0.033. Going from 13% to 7% of calories is six of those steps. That gives about 0.33 mmol/L. That last number is our own sum, not a figure from the study. We read the review from a copy on a university website, because the WHO site would not give us the file.

Lower LDL is not the same as fewer heart attacks. The Cochrane review by Hooper (2020) found 17% fewer heart and blood vessel problems with less saturated fat (15 trials, 56,675 people). It found little or no effect on deaths.

Fibre from oats. Ho et al. (2016) combined 58 trials. About 3.5 g of oat beta-glucan a day lowered LDL by 0.19 mmol/L. The trials differed a lot from each other. An older review, Brown et al. (1999), called the effect of soluble fibre "only a small contribution". Snapkin counts all fibre together. It does not count beta-glucan on its own.

Plant sterols. The EU lets foods with added plant sterols say on the label that they lower LDL (Regulation 686/2014). At 1.5 to 2.4 g a day, the label may say 7 to 10% lower. At 2.5 to 3 g a day, it may say 10 to 12.5% lower. Both are in 2 to 3 weeks. The label must say they are only meant for people who need to lower their cholesterol. The 2025 update of the European guideline notes that no study shows fewer heart attacks from them.

Coffee. In a Dutch trial, Urgert et al. (1996), 5 to 6 strong cups of cafetière coffee a day raised LDL by 0.26 mmol/L compared with filter coffee. The effect went away after people stopped. The Heart Foundation advises at most 2 to 3 espressos or coffees from capsules a day. It advises as little cafetière or boiled coffee as possible.

Eggs and cholesterol in food. The American Heart Association (2019) says healthy people can eat up to one whole egg a day. People with high cholesterol "should be cautious" with foods rich in cholesterol. The trials it combined found that LDL went up when people ate a lot more cholesterol. That was about 3 to 7 eggs a day. We read this advice from a copy, because the journal site blocked us.

What the Dutch advice adds

• Thuisarts, the Dutch GPs' site, gives LDL targets. Under 3 mmol/L is usually fine. At high risk the target is under 2.6. At very high risk it is under 1.8. Medicine is usually given at high risk, at a total cholesterol of 8 or more, or when high cholesterol runs in the family. It advises against red yeast rice pills. Since 2022 the EU allows less than 3 mg of monacolins a day from red yeast rice (Regulation 2022/860).
• About 1 in 250 people has high cholesterol that runs in the family (RIVM).
• The Netherlands Nutrition Centre says cholesterol in food raises blood cholesterol less than saturated fat does.

The saturated fat table

The table on the Dutch page comes from the Dutch food composition table, NEVO-online version 2025/9.0 (RIVM, Bilthoven). We picked common Dutch foods and a typical portion of each. The grams of saturated fat are the NEVO value per 100 g, worked out for that portion. The swap in each row is the same amount of a food with less saturated fat. The five swaps in the example save 30 g, from 38 g to 8 g. That covers those five foods only, not a whole day.

Does tracking what you eat help?

We found no trial that tested a food tracking app mainly on LDL cholesterol. The studies we did find do not agree.

• In a trial of 210 people over 6 months, people who logged food electronically ate less saturated fat than people with a paper diary. Their weight loss did not differ.
• A 2019 review of 18 trials in people with metabolic syndrome found lower LDL with phone programmes. Those programmes did much more than tracking. So we cannot say that tracking caused the effect.
• In a 2023 trial of 57 people, LDL went up slightly in the app group compared with a paper diary.
• Burke et al. (2011) found that keeping track of food goes with losing weight, but called the evidence weak.

So Snapkin does not claim to lower cholesterol. It shows what is in a meal, so that people can choose. Its saturated fat dial uses the general limit of 10% of your calorie goal, as on the nutrient targets page. It does not use the 7% the guideline gives for high cholesterol, because we do not ask about your blood values. The estimates come from a photo, and they can be off.