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From: hendler@endor.harvard.edu (David Hendler)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,rec.food.cooking
Subject: Cholesterol in plants
Message-ID: <2972@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Oct-87 13:57:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.2972
Posted: Sat Oct 10 13:57:11 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Oct-87 06:37:10 EDT
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: hendler@endor.UUCP (David Hendler)
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab Harvard, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 23
Keywords: cholesterol avocado nutrition lipid
Xref: mnetor sci.bio:715 rec.food.cooking:1917

The past couple weeks I've heard all sorts of things about certain
plant products' being full of cholesterol.  And several things about
keeping away from palm oil (a major component of Nutella (R), among
other things).  I keep forgetting to look this business up when I'm
home, and it's probably of interest to people in both these
newsgroups, anyway.  So, my questions are:

Is the `cholesterol' in avocados what people say it is?  How does it
differ from the animal kind (cholesterol < Gk _khole_ `gall' +
STEROL--the only galls I know of in plants are the ones insects
produce on trees)?

What is the nature of the storage products in (for example) nuts and
drupe stones?  Clearly, they're lipids (walnut oil, coconut oil,
etc.).  I understand that saturation differs among them.  How?

I would be very grateful to anyone who wants to tell me (or us) about
all this.  If I get lots of mail replies, I'll summarize.  I suspect
most replies should be cross-posted.

			David Hendler
			hendler@harvard.harvard.edu
			harvard!hendler