"I have become very skeptical of dietary influence on things like blood cholesterol levels." I think that's a decent heuristic on the input side. Human beings

"I have become very skeptical of dietary influence on things like blood cholesterol levels." I think that's a decent heuristic on the input side. Human beings seem wired to look for magic spells or rain dances. Eating particular special foods, or combinations of foods, or exotic ingredients seems to appeal to us. I agree with you that this additive approach is probably mistaken. "I have become very skeptical of dietary influence on things like blood cholesterol levels." But on the output side ... if you stop energy inputs and just let your body run through the backlog, your cholesterol will drop. Probably plummet - and in a surprisingly short amount of time. Rather than some exotic ingredient or weird food combination, simply staying in a fasted state longer, more regularly, would be the very first (and simplest, and least intrusive, and cheapest) step I would take. Which is to say, "dietary influence" can be huge - just not on the input side ...