Adrienne Smith wrote:

> Excess dietary carbs raise cholesterol levels too.  Why are you making the
> assumption that high levels of dietary saturated fat and monosaturated fat from
> far-raised animals necessarily raise cholesterol levels?  Plenty of people
> just eating plain old low-carb with regular feed-lot meats experience cholesterol
> drops just by lowering carbs.

The effect of lowering a high-carb intake in undoubted, it explains why
people going into low-carb direction experience a lower cholesterol.

But lowered down to where?
Why do real low-carbers then experience rather high cholesterol levels?
Concurrent huntergathereres have low readings, as Jens reported.
And you can assume the contemporary ones to be on the high-meat side,
they live in areas unsuitable for agriculture, where they have to live
today.
I only have an attempt of explanation, and it's the fat composition.
Comparisons in the USDA database showed that farmed meats  have very low
PUFA (therefore high SFA/MUFA) amounts. This is an undenieable
difference to wild game of today - and we have no reason to assume that
pleistocene beasts existed with a similar high SFA fat.

On the long term this would influence the composition of fats in cell
walls. LDL receptors in the liver. In the short run eicosanoid
formation. Quite powerfull effects.

Other explanations are there too: real huntergatherers eat a *lot* of
fiber (low density vegetables). This binds cholesterol and enhances
digestion.


 > Perhaps there are just biochemical differences between people that cannot
> ultimately be explained -- for example, my cholesterol numbers dropped when I
> stopped taking fish oil supplement and purposely added more saturated fat in
> the form of eggs (regular organic, not the omega-3 ones), uncured bacon and
> and coconut oil to my diet.

That's interesting with the fish oil.
Maybe all lowcarbers with a high cholesterol reading take fish oil.
One of these is Todd Moody and I assume Todd *is* taking fish oils.
Right, Todd? Would you give it a try of some months without it?

>  I am also curious as to how the researchers discovered the cholesterol
> numbers of our paleo ancestors -- any thoughts?

Contemporary huntergatherers.

regards

Amadeus