Oops! Rethinking Cholesterol

The viziers of the American diet -- the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee -- are poised to release new recommendations about what we should eat.  This group issues a new release every five years, and as usual, the new report will reveal that the experts have changed their minds about some things.

One is cholesterol.

Ever since 1961, the nutrition community has been warning Americans about cholesterol.  That year, the American Heart Association recommended reduced consumption of eggs to protect heart health.  The federal committee piled on, and, as recently as 2010, nutritionists were advising against "excess dietary cholesterol."

Now comes a new message:  Never mind.

According to the latest advisory from the experts, certain types of cholesterol -- saturated fat especially -- should be avoided.  But an egg at breakfast probably will not kill you.

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The anti-cholesterol mania traces back about 100 years to Russia, where a researcher fed some rabbits a high-cholesterol diet for a month or two and found that the rabbits' arteries became clogged.  

Similar experiments with white rats and other mammals found no such result. 

Still, the experts reasoned, you cannot be too careful.  We all were told to avoid eggs, shrimp and just about every kind of fat, even the fat in avocados (which, it now turns out, actually works as a cholesterol buster).  Margarine was promoted as a healthier alternative to dairy butter, when, in fact, most margarine contained more trans fat (which is very bad, we learned later) than butter itself.  There are other examples.

It seems that some small subset of humans are sensitive to any amount of cholesterol while most of the rest of us are not. It may depend on whether you are more like a rabbit or more like a white rat.  Who knows?  At this time, scientists seem concerned particularly about people with diabetes.

You may have noticed, if your doctor orders regular blood tests, that the doctor these days is talking more about ratios of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol and not so much about your overall cholesterol level.  

If your doctor tells you that you have a problem with cholesterol, ask her what you should do. But, if she tells you your levels are fine, then go ahead -- scramble yourself an egg, or take a nice shrimp from the cocktail tray.

Walk on the wild side.