A healthy endothelium (arterial wall) acts as a barrier to LDL. When the endothelium is damaged by
cardiac risk factors (high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking), it becomes porous. Small LDL particles
penetrate the endothelial wall, and this leads to cholesterol buildup Large LDL particles float freely in the
bloodstream and are less likely to be deposited in the arterial wall.
Mary Kate Wright, MS, CMI
The Effect of Natural Fats and Bad Carbs on Cholesterol
You’ve probably heard many times that eating a fatty steak is bad, and that LDL,
or bad cholesterol, is the ultimate target to decrease your risk for heart disease.
Let me explain how this information was twisted by the food industry to make us
believe sugary cereals were good and porterhouse steaks were bad.
Consider a porterhouse steak, which many Americans view as poison after
decades of recommendations that meat should be as lean as possible. Fifty
percent of a porterhouse’s total fat is monounsaturated fat, which has a beneficial
influence on good cholesterol (HDL) and lowers the bad cholesterol (LDL).
Saturated fat constitutes another 45 percent of its total fat, which also has a
positive influence on HDL. Any rise in LDL is due to the large type of LDL,
which does not clog the arteries. The remaining 5 percent of the fat in the steak
is polyunsaturated, which lowers LDL but has no meaningful effect on HDL.
All these effects on cholesterol subdivisions are good. But no medical
authority is willing to admit that eating steak has a positive influence on
cholesterol. On the other hand, consider a sugary cereal, which most would view
as a fairly healthy breakfast choice. After such a dense refined carbohydrate
meal, triglyceride levels go up as your body converts the sugary cereal into fat.
Then the smaller subdivision of bad cholesterol (LDL), the one that causes the
arterial clogging, also goes up, while good cholesterol (HDL) plummets. That’s
all bad. But the food industry twisted the facts, and somehow a low-fat diet of
cereals and fatfree milk became good for us.
The medical establishment’s message for decreasing heart disease should have
been to follow a highfat/lowcarb diet, not a low-fat/highcarb diet, but many