I like prawns but I’m trying to watch my cholesterol. Should I cut them out of my diet, or is it ok to eat them once or twice a week or so? I’ve googled about but what I’ve read is contradictory and kinda confusing. Cheers.
The reason you’re finding so much contradicting and confusing information on the internet is that there’s been a very recent change in diet recommendations for high cholesterol in the US, based on a new review of the evidence of what role dietary cholesterol plays in hypercholesterolemia (turns out, not nearly as much as we thought before.)
This has happened just within the last few months. So lots of websites have not updated their information to reflect this yet, but some have, and some are sticking to their outdated guns based on old reviews of the evidence, and some just won’t ever update their articles because they exist for the clicks, not to provide accurate up to date information.
This is the newest report, published in February of 2015. http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/PDFs/Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee.pdf
The tldr version is:
Enjoy your shrimp. Er, prawns.
Just to add to that, saturated fats that will increase your LDL-cholesterol. They cause your liver to synthesize more. And stay away from trans fats. They are a double whammy, increasing your LDL and decreasing your HDL. Although the Consumers Union and other health agencies have urged FDA to ban them from foods, this has not been done as yet. Most manufacturers have voluntarily eliminated the. (BTW, partially hydrogenated fats are trans fats.)
When my doctor 51 years ago told me to avoid shrimps because they are high in cholesterol, I didn’t believe him and looked it up. It turns out that they are very low in fat (which is almost obvious–can you make a grease stain with a shrimp?) but the little fat there is cholesterol. Especially now that cholesterol is only slightly correlated with high blood cholesterol, there is even less reason to avoid those insects-or-the-sea.
What the average doctor doesn’t know about nutrition would fill a textbook on the subject.
What the best nutritionist in the world does not know as well. Especially when the data does not yet exist.
In this case your doctor 51 years ago was doing pretty well by what was known at that time and even by the 15 year old guidelines which were based pretty much on the same data before as the new ones are, as was reviewed in a previous thread.
You are really beating him up for not knowing what research would show 50 plus years later? Tough crowd I tell you.
There is a huge amount of individual variation is response to dietary cholesterol and since there are fairly few foods that are high in cholesterol and low in saturated fats getting hard data on how many are hyper-responders versus no-responders to dietary cholesterol levels independent of saturated fat intake is extremely difficult, let alone then parsing out how the changes in blood markers translate to actual risk of adverse outcome.
The policy guidelines never presented dietary cholesterol as a major evil but did err on the side of caution. It’s still hazy as the bigger body of actual data has been focused on eggs as the high dietary cholesterol food of interest, not shellfish. The major focus by the experts back 15 years ago and today remains on overall healthy patterns of eating.
Short version: it is completely fine to have prawns a few days a week.
How many prawns are we talking here? three prawns is hardly a galaxy.
I like the juxtaposition of the names of the OP and first responder.
My username can often be used as a post. 
Generally true but not true for every type of saturated fat. For instance stearic acid doesn’t appear to raise LDL levels. Also note that although lauric acid raises LDL, it also raises HDL and generally improves the HDL/total cholesterol ratio. Myristic and palmitic acids raise both LDL and HDL but have little effect on the HDL/total cholesterol ratio.
It depends on the presentation. Shrimp/prawns that you buy ready peeled are not very greasy, because the process of peeling them is essentially a thorough wash. Whole prawns that you peel for yourself at the table are pretty greasy (and even more so if you eat the bits that aren’t pink tail meat)
Can I still use “it’s too high in cholesterol” as an excuse to never eat liver?
As a long-time mocker of various dietary recommendations from all sides (standard medicine and health kooks), I’d say the recent dietary cholesterol recommendations are not particularly astounding.
The body has no trouble synthesizing cholesterol. Feedback mechanisms, which are very patient-specific for total body lipds in general and cholesterol in particular, generally diminish endogenous production where an exogenous source is available.
Ditto w/ fats, w/o going into the whole “what to eat” nuances.
In general, if you want to effectively lower your lipids using diet, ignore what you eat* but eat way less of everything. So much less that you are thin.
And while you are at it, engage in moderate exercise.
If, like me, you are too fat and lazy to bother with diet, check your genetic potential for vascular disease by looking at as much of your non-smoking ancestry as you can.
*There are other reasons to eat your raw veggies, etc (bowel health, e.g.) but I’m just goin’ after the lipid nonsense here…
I just received “The Nutrition Action Health Letter” and it has an article concerning cholesterol and fats. The article reports that the [I[New York Daily News* is the source of the new foofaraw concerning dietary cholesterol. It states that this newspaper cited Reuters in misinterpreting the evidence. Reuters stated that a review of scores of studies showed no correlation between dietary cholesterol and HDL, and said that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee determined that cholesterol was not a “nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” The Health Letter says that the committee did not review scores of studies. The committee did not state it reviewed scores of studies but only that “available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC reports.” However, that was not consistent with that report. That report concluded that there was" insufficient evidence" The article noted other media errors in reporting scientific reports, and noted that some studies find a risk even for one-a-day egg eaters.