One camp claims that fat, butter, meats don’t give you high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, and another camp – more traditional medicine tells you to limit your cholesterol intake especially if you have CAD. One thing both camps seem to agree on is that pickling your liver with alcohol and eating a lot of sugary foods will cause harm. Why the debate? I err on the side of caution and eat a low fat diet, don’t drink alcohol, and am cautious with sugary foods as I have mild CAD. Whom do I believe?
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A slight clarification, if I may. Overall, the camp that is pro-meat/fat doesn’t say that a person eating a diet high in meat and fat will not raise a person’s cholesterol. Most will say that eating that way may very well raise a person’s cholesterol—maybe a little, or maybe a lot; it depends on the person’s individual biology.
Where these folks disagree with the mainstream is that, even though a person eating that way may end up with higher cholesterol, they feel that this cholesterol will not result in atherosclerosis, due to the diet tends to put that person in a metabolic milieu different from that prevalent in people that eat a large amount of hyper-processed, carb-rich foods.
tl;dr: pro-meat folks say your cholesterol may go up, but it’s the hyper-processed, carb-rich foods that give you atherosclerosis.
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