Eat Healthy, eat cholesterol

In previous posts I have talked about the role of cholesterol in the integrity of aging mitochondria’s membrane potential. All very technical, but in tune with the rise in the notion of supporting mitochondrial health to ward off aging. Below is an oblique take on the same subject from a dietary level.

This is a post about diet, specifically about a diet that is very much in favour as the way to combine good health with longevity. It is of course the ‘Mediterranean Diet’. I have genuinely never come across a single article with anything to say against it. If there were ever a consensus in the fashion-prone world of what to eat, this diet must be it.

So, what is a ‘Mediterranean Diet’? Obviously the is shorthand for ‘things folk eat around the countries bordering the Mediterranean sea’ and that we all agree are healthy. It’s credibility relies on a combination of the manifest healthy longevity of those native populations who adhere to it and it’s agreement with popular buzz-health-words such as omega-3, anti-oxidants and low-carb.

We may agree its components (other than liberal amounts of sunshine) are virgin olive oil,  fresh small(ish) fish, seafood, eggs, fresh fruit, vegetables, wild-fungi,  nuts and parsimonious portions of red meat and high GI carbs such as sugars and potato.  Any objectors to my list at this point? I think I am pretty safe so far and ‘afficionado dietistas’ will be able to dissect these foods minutely into a Sunday Supplement ‘who’s who’ of good things.

What follows is a list of food in order of how much cholesterol they contain or how cholesterogenic they are. This last term needs a line of explanation. Cholesterogenic refers to the promotion of formation of cholesterol by the body from building block molecules that are in chemical terms almost cholesterol. The two major ingredients that fall into this category are squalene and ergosterol.

Here then are the top ten:

Here are the top cholesterogenic ingredients:

I think the data makes it’s own point but for clarity a diet that we have called the Mediterranean Diet is probably one of the highest in cholesterol that you could come up with. Only a japanese-style diet could trump it...and yes they are famously long-lived and healthy too. Note also that the red-meats don’t even get into the top ten!

Finally if I were to make the claim that high-cholesterol diets are healthiest diets that you can eat, and anyone cared what I said or what evidence I have,  the post-truth world would scream and shout in protest. After all, this is a mere correlatio,n not a cause and effect mechanism being proposed. On the other hand the correlation of blood cholesterol levels and arterial disease has been treated with near reverence.