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From: dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,rec.food.cooking
Subject: Re: Cholesterol in plants
Message-ID: <304@spdcc.COM>
Date: Sat, 10-Oct-87 23:46:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.304
Posted: Sat Oct 10 23:46:03 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Oct-87 19:35:04 EDT
References: <2972@husc6.UUCP>
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 40
Keywords: cholesterol avocado nutrition lipid
Xref: mnetor sci.bio:718 rec.food.cooking:1918

In article <2972@husc6.UUCP>, hendler@endor.harvard.edu (David Hendler) writes:
> The past couple weeks I've heard all sorts of things about certain plant
> products' being full of cholesterol.

I don't know where you heard that; cholesterol is found only in animal
products.  

> And several things about keeping away from palm oil (a major component of
> Nutella (R), among other things)
 
Palm oil is highly saturated (more so than milk or beef fat, for example.)
It is an exception to the general rule that vegetable oils are unsaturated.

> Is the `cholesterol' in avocados what people say it is?
 
Ain't none--see above.  The oil in avocados is primarily monounsaturated,
which has either neutral or favorable effects on blood cholesterol levels,
depending on what studies you read.

The key confusion here is between foods which contain cholesterol themselves
(only those containing animal fats) and those which can elevate blood
cholesterol levels due to the amount of saturated fat they contain (which
often coincides with those which contain cholesterol, e.g., eggs, beef, but
which also would include products like palm oil.)

Here's a few things to remember, at least for the ordinarily healthy person.
Your total saturated fat intake should be more important to you than your
intake of foods which contain a lot of cholesterol.  That's not to say that
dietary cholesterol isn't important, but that by managing your saturated fat
intake, you almost always manage the second, while the converse isn't
necessarily true at all.  What's more, dietary saturated fat is probably more
powerful in raising blood cholesterol levels than is dietary cholesterol,
and it's easy to reduce your frequency of eating the most concentrated sources
of dietary cholesterol such as eggs, liver (ugh) and brains (ugh ugh.), while
reducing saturated fat is a little harder since it's found most all animal
products.
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.harvard.edu
dyer@spdcc.COM aka {ihnp4,harvard,linus,ima,bbn,m2c}!spdcc!dyer