With a bit more reflection, I am just curious to know whether your husband is feeling ill in any way, or whether he is in perfect health. If he's in perfect health (no indication whatsoever of impending heart disease--obesity, sedentary lifestyle, sluggishness/fatigue etc etc), then you may run into trouble trying to lower his values since the test levels would indicate his normal levels of cholesterol.
But, if your husband's health is somewhat out of balance, then the higher levels may actually indicate a cholesterol metabolism inefficiency, and in such case, a healthy diet and lifestyle that is based on his very specific metabolic type should bring down his levels. In the former case, you can't expect much result from testing out various foods, or he may actually get harmed in the process if he's already healthy.
In regards to his metabolic type, he needs to evaluate whether he's a carbtype or a proteintype, or something in between. Check out "The Metabolic Typing Diet" by Wolcott and you'll see there is no one diet that will improve cholesterol metabolism. There's one example of a carb-type person's diet of lots of carbs and little fat and protein that brought health back and lowered cholesterol and blood pressure, and one example of a guy with the same symptoms but who was helped by a high-protein, high-fat diet because of his specific metabolic type. Many folks can figure out by themselves what sort of type they are (my husband who has not taken the questionnarie in the book is a definite protein-type--he simply thrives off of little carbs, lots of fat and meat). Usually a person will know what foods work best if their blood is not too racially mixed, but since this is America, most people are of mixed descent. Northern folks are programmed to eat high-protein, high-fat and equatorial folks are vegetarian-dominant. But there are other considerations.
This is a lot of information and you may not wish to get this involved in his diet, especially since your main concern is about insurance premiums. But even so, just wanted to bring up this up so you know that one diet may lower someone's cholesterol while increasing another's.
On another note, I think it should be illegal to base premiums simply on cholesterol levels, and not consider all other factors. Certainly unethical and unscientific. I wish you all the best.
Josefina.
