6 ms·

There hasn't been much if any correlation shown between dietary cholesterol and blood-level cholesterol for most people. Your digestive tract has no problems b

There hasn't been much if any correlation shown between dietary cholesterol and blood-level cholesterol for most people. Your digestive tract has no problems breaking cholesterol down and metabolizing it, and conversely, your liver has no problem making cholesterol. This makes sense, as cholesterol is vital for the proper functioning of your brain amongst other organs, so we can't rely on getting enough of it from our diet.

baxtr 7y ago
Why is the NIH then saying you shouldn’t get more than 200mg per day?
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  The linked report is from 2005. They are no longer making this blanket recommendation. As another commenter points out, that's about the cholesterol contained in one egg, and less than the amount of cholesterol in a typical portion of meat. It just doesn't make sense that our body would have so many issues handling something that's been so prevalent in our diet for millions of years, and that we're well-adapted to consume. We're omnivores, not herbivores, and animal products contain cholesterol. We can handle eating it.
  - baxtr 7y ago
    Of course it might make sense. We’ve not been built for longevity but for high reproduction rates. Dying with 40 is not a big deal if you’ve got enough offspring. Also: have you tried to apply your logic to smoking? Many people I know enjoy smoking. How come evolution has optimized us for that? Just because we can handle something in the short run doesn’t mean it’s good for us in the long run.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      The smoking parallel isn't very illuminating. Eating food is necessary for survival; smoking tobacco isn't. And we've been eating cholesterol-containing animal products for many tens of millions of years, long before we became Homo sapiens, whereas the smoking of tobacco is a very recent phenomenon, way too recent to have any effect on evolutionary time scales. In what way has evolution optimized for smoking? It gives us cancer and kills us. We're clearly not optimized for it.

baxtr 7y ago

Why is the NIH then saying you shouldn’t get more than 200mg per day?

CydeWeys 7y ago
The linked report is from 2005. They are no longer making this blanket recommendation. As another commenter points out, that's about the cholesterol contained in one egg, and less than the amount of cholesterol in a typical portion of meat. It just doesn't make sense that our body would have so many issues handling something that's been so prevalent in our diet for millions of years, and that we're well-adapted to consume. We're omnivores, not herbivores, and animal products contain cholesterol. We can handle eating it.
- baxtr 7y ago
  Of course it might make sense. We’ve not been built for longevity but for high reproduction rates. Dying with 40 is not a big deal if you’ve got enough offspring. Also: have you tried to apply your logic to smoking? Many people I know enjoy smoking. How come evolution has optimized us for that? Just because we can handle something in the short run doesn’t mean it’s good for us in the long run.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    The smoking parallel isn't very illuminating. Eating food is necessary for survival; smoking tobacco isn't. And we've been eating cholesterol-containing animal products for many tens of millions of years, long before we became Homo sapiens, whereas the smoking of tobacco is a very recent phenomenon, way too recent to have any effect on evolutionary time scales. In what way has evolution optimized for smoking? It gives us cancer and kills us. We're clearly not optimized for it.