Warnings against eating foods high in cholesterol, like eggs or
shrimp, have been a mainstay of
dietary recommendations for decades.
That could change if the scientific advisory panel for the 2015
iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has its say.
A summary of the committee’s December 2014 meeting
says “Cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for
overconsumption.” Translation: You don’t need to worry about cholesterol
in your food.
Why not? There’s a growing consensus among nutrition scientists that
cholesterol in food has little effect on the amount of cholesterol in
the bloodstream. And that’s the cholesterol that matters.
Nutrition experts like Dr. Walter C. Willett, chair of the Department
of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, called the plan a
reasonable move. Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at
the Cleveland Clinic, told USA Today “It’s the right decision. We got
the dietary guidelines wrong.”
Keep in mind that this isn’t a done deal. The panel, which is
formally known as the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, makes
recommendations for the next guidelines update, but these
recommendations aren’t always followed.
The cholesterol connection
Cholesterol has a bad reputation, its name linked to heart attacks,
strokes, and other types of cardiovascular disease. Yet cholesterol is
as necessary for human health as water or air.
Cholesterol is a type of fat, or lipid. It is an essential building
block for cell membranes and other crucial structures. It is needed to
form the protective sheath that surrounds nerve fibers. The body uses
cholesterol to make hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, the bile
acids we need to digest and absorb fats, and vitamin D.
Cholesterol is so important that your liver and intestines make it
day and night from fats, sugars, and proteins. In the average person,
the body’s production of cholesterol far outstrips any contribution from
cholesterol in food.
Why is blood cholesterol a concern? Too much of it, especially in the
wrong kind of particle, can cause trouble inside blood vessels (see
“From cholesterol to crisis” below). Harmful low-density lipoprotein
(LDL) particles ferry cholesterol to artery walls. Protective
high-density lipoprotein (HDL) particles pull cholesterol out of
circulation and deliver it to the liver for destruction.
Doing away with the beware-cholesterol-in-food warning would simplify
the art of choosing healthy foods. And it would let people enjoy foods
that contain higher amounts of cholesterol, such as eggs, shrimp, and
lobster, without worrying about it. A better focus is on reducing
saturated fat and trans fat in the diet, which play greater roles in
damaging blood vessels than dietary cholesterol.
Science, including nutrition science, is a process of change. New
findings emerge that nudge aside old thinking and prompt new
recommendations. That’s easy for someone like me to say, since I closely
follow nutrition science and research and understand how they work. But
for folks who don’t, a change in the recommendations about cholesterol
in food is likely to be seen as another dietary flip-flop and undermine
confidence in what’s known about healthy eating.
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