Chapter 2 - Cholesterol, Facts and Fiction

diet (175 grams of carbs per day – a level of carbohydrates still high enough that the majority of diabetics would not be able to handle it on a regular basis without medications). The other group was fed a diet that was low in fat but was high in complex carbohydrates, (the diet currently recommended by most dietitians and healthcare professionals) for two weeks. After the first two weeks, the groups switched diets for the next two weeks. The results were shocking! After two weeks on the high carb, low fat diet, the average total cholesterol was 159 (in the dangerously low range) and the ratio of HDL to LDL (which needs to be 3 or less) was 3.47, a high number.

The group on the high fat, “low carbohydrate” diet had an average cholesterol level of 191 (only one point above the ideal reading) with a ratio of HDL to LDL of 3.31 (still high but much better than the low fat group)!

If the “low carb” diet in this experiment had been limited to 30 grams or less per day, the resulting differences would have probably been far more dramatic.

Healthcare professionals have been admonishing people for years to avoid eggs as if they were pure poison, especially egg yolks, because they contain such high levels of cholesterol. But the prestigious “New England Journal of Medicine” published a case study of an 88 year old man who ate an average of twenty five eggs each and every day for thirty years. The medical experts who caution against eating anything containing cholesterol would have expected this man to have had astronomically high levels of cholesterol with a diet like this, but he didn’t. His cholesterol levels had remained at an average of 200 for the entire time (he’d been in a nursing home where it was closely monitored for all those years). His HDL to LDL ratio was 3.16 — close to ideal, especially for an 88 year old man! How did he accomplish this amazing feat? How was that even possible? Read on!

In study after study, people have eaten high amounts of fats but their cholesterol levels have stayed unchanged or nearly unchanged. In some of these experiments, subjects have eaten large amounts of

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