Do Oreos Lower Cholesterol? No.

are Oreos a health food now that's the topic of this week's Healthcare [Music] triage according to a recent study Oreo cookie treatment is better at lowering LDL cholesterol the bad cholesterol then high-intensity therapy with cholesterol lowering drugs called statins thankfully the media hasn't gone completely wild with this one though we still found a couple headlines like this one claiming the participants on the Oreo treatment plan lowered their LDL almost twice as much as when they were on a course of high-intensity Statin therapy a couple nitpicks here the Oreo cookie treatment is actually a ketogenic diet plus Oreo cookies oh and second Point by participants they must mean one person because that is how many people this study examine yep that's correct exactly one person that's not to say that studies of any one person are unheard of in science they exist it's only to say that they can't really claim a dang thing in any broad sense and to be fair the authors weren't trying to make any big claims the Oreos were only used as a way to test a hypothesis about adding carbohydrates meaning that no one was actually suggesting that excessive Oreo consumption was part of a healthy diet and they specifically point out that the study is meant to provoke further research but you know how the media gets but seeing this study left us reminiscing about cholesterol and health and we thought what the heck let's do a refresher on one of the oldie but goodies so we're going to make a sharp turn here to the topic of dietary cholesterol if you've read my book The Bad food Bible none of what I'm about to say will surprise you if you're someone who worries about cholesterol in your food your breakfast life is potentially going to get a whole lot better after this video while our bodies absolutely need and actually make cholesterol for all kinds of important body stuff it's true the cholesterol levels have been implicated in heart disease unfortunately we don't really know what the right amount of cholesterol is and there are even still arguments about the best measurements to correlate to health what there should not be an argument about however is the cholesterol in our diets there simply isn't evidence that the amount of cholesterol we eat has much to do at all with the amount of LDL again the bad cholesterol in our blood and it isn't just a lack of evidence about the effect of cholesterol on our diets you can tell that questions of dietary cholesterol and health were really keeping people up at night because there are quite a few studies of decent quality on this topic giving us a better idea of what's going on than we can generally expect in the nutrition literature and that idea based even on results from several randomized controlled trials is that lowering the amount of cholesterol you eat won't make a big difference for the levels of cholesterol in your body to build an example from my book over 40 years ago in 1980 a couple researchers pulled out some fancy math and figured that eliminating 19,000 eggs from one's diet over the course of a lifetime would add a whopping 20 days of life to make matters worse later evidence suggested that they were being conservative in their estimates and that most of us wouldn't even get the 20 extra days above ground in exchange for all those lackluster egg white omelets I realize this may come as a shock to many people if like me you grew up 100% believing the consumption of cholesterol was basically signing your own death certificate after all this is what we heard from major organizations like the USDA for decades thankfully the USDA and most others have recently come around and we can all rest more easily at The Breakfast Table and wherever else cholesterol lurks in our diets hey did you enjoy this episode you might enjoy this other episode on misunderstanding the data on diet exercise and mortality we'd appreciate it if you'd like this video And subscribe to the channel down below and maybe go to patreon.com/crashcourse [Music]