Look, nobody’s perfect, especially in the science world. Researchers all over the world probably make a handful of mistakes for every one thing they get right – the world is just such a complicated place. When we do scientific research, we’re only testing out theories — and the only way to arrive at the correct answer is to systematically eliminate as many of the false possibilities as you can.
Case in point, The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion recently decided that cholesterol was not longer “a nutrient of concern,” which might be a slap in the face for anyone who has ever had a lipid panel, talked to their doctor about cholesterol, or avoided eating shrimp and eggs because of their high cholesterol content. The United State’s stance on various dietary choices has continually bounced around over the past 60 years, never settling on any one set of guidelines. One good argument here is that not all individuals should be eating the same diet. If you listened to pop culture a few decades ago, you’d have thrown away the butter and relied on Crisco or shortening, which may have contained trans-fats and thus were generally deemed to be harmful to your health. Cholesterol, salt, and fat have all been through that ringer, but none (almost none of the peer-reviewed, reproducible ones, anyway) of the studies we’ve done have really produced solid scientific evidence that we should avoid them at all costs. So the nation picked up Crisco. Then it picked up low-sodium snacks. Then it picked up fat-free heavy cream (which shouldn’t exist without disturbing the space-time continuum, in my book).
And now we come to today, when cholesterol is no longer a threat. Fear not eating eggs and shrimp and all kinds of meat products! The interesting part about this change to the guidelines, though, is that we already knew this. Countless studies have not only shown that dietary cholesterol doesn’t cause any health problems (and it certainly doesn’t get stuck into your bloodstream and case plaque), but it’s also recognized that 90% of the cholesterol in the human body is produced internally, that is, by your organs. Clearly, cholesterol or one of its precursors/products is needed in the body in some way, or we wouldn’t waste resources making it. Whatever the reason for it, we’ve known for quite some time that if you give Group A no cholesterol and you give Group B 300% of the recommended daily value of cholesterol, over an arbitrary time period their blood cholesterol levels show no correlation with how they’re eating. And even though we’ve known this and had the evidence for some years, we’re only just now getting updated guidelines.
Hopefully this makes you wonder about what else we as a civilization don’t know about ourselves. Until recently we didn’t know that cholesterol wasn’t bad for you. Until recently we thought margarine and Crisco were healthier alternatives to butter, because we thought that butter caused heart disease. One day in the future we’ll come to realize that something else we thought was harmful might not actually be, or vice versa. It’s a very tenuous relationship that Americans have with the food as it is, and the ever-changing dietary guidelines we’re expected to follow do nothing to strengthen our faith in the empiricism innate to each individual on the planet.
It’s pretty well understood at this point that sugar is definitely harmful (in the quantities we consume it, anyway). So if cholesterol isn’t harmful, then at least that eliminates one of the false possibilities we might otherwise waste our time with in future metabolic research.
Your Brain on Sci 