Message #41486

[mccoy]

I do not agree about classifying AHA into a blatant criminal organization.

Lately, there have been religious wars engaged among various dietary tribes. There are different tribes, every one of them believes that their own diet is the right religion, everyone else is wrong. That's pure dietary fanaticism.

The narrative about fats has gone bonkers in the recent years, people affirming that cholesterol in blood is not detrimental and such.

I've been listening to hours and hours of podcasts on blood lipids and the credible literature presently is that APOB seems to be the most important risk index of atherosclerosis. APOB includes LDL and VLD cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is a proxy for APOB, not a perfect one but often an acceptable one.

People have gone insane saying that total cholesterol above 300 mg/dL is all right, that LDL above 200 is perfect, and so on.

APOB and LDL cholesterol are indeed correlated to atherosclerotic and mortality hazard, the more, the riskier. There is no reasonable doubt about it.

Some strategies to drastically cut the risk of atherosclerosis include taking statins, PCSK-9 inhibitors and other pharmaceutical drugs to keep very low levels of APOB-cholesterol.

It is well known that the AHA is or has been sponsored by the Coca-cola company. Their guidelines may not be perfect but are reasonable on the whole.

EVOO is the best vegetable oil but like Steve says, there are often bad products and in America it's very expensive. Avocado is a very good source of monounsaturated fats (those mostly contained in EVOO). Walnuts are very good as well as far as healthy vegetable fats go.

I'm eating tons of EVOO, but my place is one of the main producers in the world and I buy directly from known farmers.