Is she right or not?
Cholesterol & heart disease – there is a relationship, but it’s not what you think
The article was a bit TLDR for me, although what I saw reminded me a bit of things I’ve read from Taubes.
I can offer one anecdote for you. I’ve been eating a diet that consists mostly of grassfed meat, pastured eggs, wild-caught fish, and vegetables. I’ve been doing this for almost three years now. In that time, I’ve lost over 60 pounds, and my cholesterol levels have gone down, with bad cholesterol and triglycerides way down, and good cholesterol way up. My diet is 60-65 percent fat, mostly saturated and animal-based. I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s certainly worked for me.
Here’s a neuroscientistclaiming the same thing in a youtube video.
Even the American Heart Association says that eating eggs isn’t a problem, and eggs contain the most cholesterol of any food commonly eaten (I say commonly, there are some that are even higher, like liver, but I don’t think people regularly eat them). Of course, you can only eat one egg (about 2/3 of RDA) a day because you still have to adhere to the recommended cholesterol intake.
Also, some people (about 1/3) do get elevated cholesterol from eating a high-cholesterol diet, but both LDL and HDL increase, offsetting their effects (a decrease in HDL is worse than an increase in LDL); the LDL particles also increase in size (small LDL particles are the bad ones), as mentioned here.
A similar story can be said about saturated fat - only certain types of saturated fat actually negatively affect cholesterol; namely, palmitic acid, of which palm oil (its namesake) is especially rich in (thus why you hear it is bad for you, it is very common in many other plant oils and animal fats though, but not as much as in palm oil). On the flip side, there is lauric acid - which is actually the most beneficial fatty acid, even more so than omega-3s, in its effect on cholesterol levels; it increases cholesterol but HDL in particular (another one is stearic acid, which lowers LDL cholesterol). Of course, none of these are as bad as trans fat produced by partial hydrogenation (not to be confused with natural trans fats, which are actually a special combination (conjugated) fat, which have health benefits).
IMHO, as individuals we are all, well, individual enough that it’s almost impossible to tell how a particular diet, or dietary component, will affect any particular part of our lives. It’s an oldie but a goodie: One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Well, let’s see.
On the one hand, we have experts in cardiovascular physiology and heart disease from organizations including the CDC, National Cholesterol Education Program, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, American College of Cardiology Foundation, and American Heart Association endorsing the value of lowering cholesterol blood levels through diet, exercise and avoidance of smoking in the prevention of heart disease.
http://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/guidelines_recommendations.htm
On the other hand, we have Zoe Harcombe, who says she does “a fortnightly newsletter called “Diet & Health Today” in our on line support club.”
I’d go with what Zoe says. 
No, on the other hand, we have you who misinterprets what they say to mean that reducing consumption of cholesterol actually lowers such, rather than it just being the healthy diet in general. And who does not read the thread, which shows those same people saying eggs do not cause high cholesterol, despite being high in the dietary form.
My cholesterol test results went way down when I started eating low carb and eating mountains of saturated fat and cholesterol.
Also, my blood pressure is fantastic now. Other test results seem to show lower inflammation (cortisol), so I figure I’m doing great as far as cutting my CVD risk.
My grandfather is on statins and attempts to eat a conventionally healthy diet and still cannot get his cholesterol under control nor his blood pressure, so I lean away from blaming fat and dietary cholesterol alone from causing several of the biomarkers associated with CVD risk.
This is basically what the late Dr. Atkins claimed for years-that carbohydrates are more of a problem than fats. Yes, blood cholesterol can be controlled with statins, but they have their own side effects. I think much more research into the role of dietary cholesterol is needed.
these same “experts” were all in favor of trans fats as “healthier” for us.
The OP is about a person who claims that “dietary cholesterol intake has nothing to do with heart disease.”
And the source material I linked to does in fact recommend lowering intake of cholesterol in the diet to enhance cardiovascular health. Examples:
*“Consume fewer foods with sodium (salt), saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, and refined grains” *(2010 dietary recommendations)
"This easy-to-read booklet is designed to help you make the lifestyle changes that will lower blood cholesterol and reduce your risk for heart disease. It explains how to follow the TLC diet (low in saturated fat, trans fat, and dietary cholesterol), increase physical activity, and manage weight for people whose cholesterol level is above their goal. "
Your basis for this claim is what?
The reason I posted the OP was when I hit her page I thought to myself, “here’s some crank peddling snake oil”, but as I read her page she’s really not peddling anything but her newsletter.
In viewing the YouTube video the Dr. speaking about the history of US dietary recommendations makes a compelling case that a lot of these nutritional recommendations and related advice about diet have less to do with science and more to do with business and politics.
He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks a lot of the current nutritional paradigm Doctors rely on relative to recommendations about obesity and treatment of cardiovascular disease WRT diet is based on sloppy science, big pharma interests, and even fraud. The video IMO is worth a listen just for the historical perspective it gives in how doctors have addressed obesity from the 1800s until now and how the high protein approach is nothing new. The other weird thing (to me at least) is how amazingly *old *the studies are that a lot of these conclusions and recommendations are based on ( early 1900s to the 1950’s) and (if he’s right) how sloppy they were.
Doctors aren’t idiots and I’m not pretending there’s some master conspiracy to keep people fat and sick so they can pump them full of statins, but it does seem that the argument that the huge uptick in obesity over the past 30 years is more directly related to an increase in refined carbohydrate intake than any other factor has some legs.
Beyond this there is growing evidence that minimizing carbs and maximizing protein intake (even fatty protein in some cases) is far more effective at controlling obesity than a diet based on the US food pyramid.
The late bodybuilding trainer Vince Gironda famously recommended eating lots of eggs to build muscle and lose fat, and to keep carbohydrate intake low. (He of course also recommended lots of exercise).
In response to criticism that this diet would put people at risk for heart disease, he claimed that:
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Trigliceride levels were a better measure of coronary risk than blood cholesterol levels;
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Consuming foods high in cholesterol would not necessarily raise blood cholesterol;
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Foods high in saturated fats were more likely to raise blood cholesterol than foods high in cholesterol (but some foods had both);
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Individual genetics played a role, so the best recommendation was to monitor cholesterol and trigliceride levels when eating such a diet.
Typical meals under this regimen:
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A whole bunch of eggs, mixed in a blender with half and half; tossed salad
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A large helping of cooked hamburger; steamed vegetables
Good, now we’ve got a bodybuilder’s trainer and a YouTube video weighing in. The evidence is becoming overwhelming! :rolleyes:
Uh-huh. They don’t want us to know the real story, so They can sell us nasty drugs while they’re secretly chowing down on eggs cooked in coconut oil and living to ripe, healthy old ages.*
Beyond the fact that the recommendations I linked to are all quite recent, you can go to PubMed and look up for yourself the literature on lipids and cardiovascular health. There’s a ton of recently published and ongoing work in the field (the first 40 journal articles that come up in a search of cholesterol and heart disease have publication dates of October-December 2012).
Anyone who claims most of the studies are 1950s vintage or earlier is amazingly ignorant or deliberately promoting a falsehood.
There are a number of factors involved in good cardiovascular health, of which a lowered cholesterol intake is only one (weight loss, exercise and avoiding smoking/secondhand smoke are among the others).
*what is not so amazing is how many of the people who tell you mainstream health recommendations are financially motivated, are themselves out to sell you supplements, books and subscriptions.
I don’t want to wade through the first 40 articles, but after the first 10 it is quite clear those are irrelevant topics that just happen to include the word “cholesterol”. Did you read all 40? Could you link to some specific studies that back up your point?
I found this one that seems a little more relevant on the same site.
Here is another relevant article from the Pubmed website:
Here is some more information from the Harvard School of Public Health:
I believe what he means is that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was thought to be healthier because it had no cholesterol and less saturated fat (and comes from vegetables, which everybody knows are healthy), before it was found that hydrogenation produced trans fats (full hydrogenation produces saturated fat) which are now know to be far worse. Even today, you can still find products which proclaim to be saturated fat/cholesterol free and contain trans fat. For example Bac-Os (got to love the “adds a trivial amount of trans fat”, which can be listed as 0 grams due to lenient labeling rules, and the blurb about being part of a healthy diet; of course, real bacon is also bad for you, but not necessarily because it has saturated fat and cholesterol).
Those statements are contradictory; eggs are loaded with saturated fat as can be seen here (347 calories contain 38% of your DV), and in roughly the same proportion relative to total fat as other animal based foods (one wonders if the DV for saturated fat was based on a diet consisting of only said foods, since to get 100% of your DV of saturated fat, you will also get about the same in total fat; of course, processed foods can have far more saturated fat as a percent of total fat, plus use oils (palm oil) with a higher palmitic acid content, which adversely affects cholesterol, unlike other saturated fats).
I mentioned that particular search as an illustration that dietary cholesterol and heart disease are an ongoing research emphasis and that it is false to claim all the work was done in the 1950s or earlier. One of those “first ten” papers emphasizes the importance of lowering LDL cholesterol levels, mentioning “clinical trial data confirming the efficacy of aggressive lipid management. Within secondary prevention in particular, there is a need for more widespread use of intensive statin therapy to achieve low LDL cholesterol levels to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in patients at high risk for recurrent events.”
Your definition of “relevance” and mine apparently differ.
What annoys me is the claim by Random People On The Internet that dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease and that recommendations to lower cholesterol through diet and drugs are “A SCAM!”. What recent research has demonstrated (and your own, most recent link emphasizes) is that there are multiple factors including genetics and type of fat that influence development of cardiovascular disease, and emphasis on amount of saturated fat intake alone is not justified (nor is it what mainstream medicine calls for).
They don’t say harm from excessive saturated fat intake is a myth - they warn that “generic” low fat diets haven’t generally worked out well to curb obesity and heart disease, particularly since people typically don’t follow other advice on calories, exercise etc. and chow down on lots of carbohydrates to make up for the lost fats.
Relevancy tends to decline with advancing age (that article is 15 years old).