if you ever had to start consuming low fat dairy and cheese due to high cholesterol, did your ldl cholesterol levels decrease?

Recent research has shown cholesterol levels aren't really caused by dietary fat intake.

It's largely influenced by genetics, and by other things, especially glucose instability.

When blood glucose levels vary wildly - e.g. eating a high carb meal spikes it, which causes the pancreas to release a lot of insulin at once to cope with the sudden glucose increase, which then signals EVERY cell to "use glucose!", including fat cells which are very efficient at storing glucose as fat. Since carbs are metabolized quickly, glucose levels drop quickly because of that initial insulin spike.

Those sudden high blood glucose levels apparently cause vascular injury, and cholesterol is used to basically form a patch on the artery wall so it's protected while it heals. Keep cycling glucose levels, and you'll have high cholesterol levels as the body heals the vascular system. Looking at the last 40 years (starting in the 80's), what's the dietary advice been? Less fat, more carbs. And we wonder why we're seeing more diabetes and cardiovascular disease?

Also, high cholesterol on its own is only a single metric (just like blood pressure - there've been Olympic athletes with high cholesterol and high blood pressure...) - there's lots more going on, and it all needs to be considered. Franky I don't worry about cholesterol, as the single thing we can all do that has major impact to every system in our bodies, is to eat in a way to keep glucose levels stable.

I say this as someone with Type II diabetes in my immediate family, I have hypoglycemia, and Type I in the extended family. I've had to study up a lot over the last 20 years to keep family and myself healthy and safe.

A good intro on these things is a book by Barry Sears called "The Zone", published in about 1994 (ignore all other Zone books, they're marketing garbage). He's a chemist who saw heart disease in relatively young people in his family, and went back to school for a biochemistry doctorate because he didn't want to die young.

Low-fat cheese is horrible, tbh. It's like eating slices of vinyl eraser, and does not spark cheese-joy. Cardio-risk-wise it's like getting healthy by smoking half-length cigarettes: everybody loses.

There's no good alternatives that fill every niche, but humnmus is a damn good start. It's got (good) fat and protein and it's salty and umami, and feels like you've actually eaten something.

There are some alternatives to cheese that are pretty good. I’m an omnivore but my wife has convinced me that there are some good vegetarian options out there. Might be worth exploring if the low-fat cheese isn’t palatable.

• Cashew cream on enchiladas is fantastic
• the fake shredded cheese made out of almond isn’t so bad. We use it on salads, chili, etc. It’s expensive though.
• TVP gives things that umami flavor, good in chili, but it more so acts like ground beef. Don’t put too much in.
• Blended tofu with nutritional yeast acts as a very good ricotta substitute (coincidentally tofu also makes for a very good chocolate pie)

With this, and trimming down my meat consumption to just a few times a week, as well as a little exercise, I’ve kept my LDL numbers below my late 20s highs, which were borderline - I’m nearing two decades older now.

I went vegan and had no change in my cholesterol. I have never had a diet that was high in fat, so that didn't surprise me. My doctor told me I need to give up alcohol for any change to occur. There's definitely a genetic component as well, my dad and his dad seriously struggled with their cholesterol levels.

I had to abstain from alcohol over the summer because I started a medication that is hard on the liver, and I just had a lipid panel today. So I'll find out early next week if my doctor was right lol