The fact is that any cholesterol we get from food is too much; our bodies just don’t need it. That’s because there are actually two different methods by which serum cholesterol is elevated: through the intake of dietary cholesterol and through the internal manufacture of cholesterol by the body itself in response to high intakes of saturated fat.

It’s important to understand, first of all, that cholesterol is not an essential nutrient, which means there’s no need for it in our diet. In fact, dietary cholesterol – the cholesterol found only in animal products – has been proven harmful to our arteries and has no known benefits at all. So even though cholesterol is a vital part of all of our cell membranes and is a precursor to many hormones and to vitamin D, we don’t need to eat a bit of it. Why not? Because our cells can make all we need – even if we’re on a cholesterol-free diet.

Every cell in your body is capable of making cholesterol, but by far the greatest amount is produced in the liver and intestines, which manufacture about 500 to 1,000 milligrams a day. Even if you never ate any cholesterol at all, your body would still produce whatever cholesterol it needed. Remember, too, that whenever you eat foods containing saturated fat (whether they contain cholesterol or not), your liver responds by automatically overproducing cholesterol – none of which is needed – and reducing its ability to remove dietary cholesterol from the bloodstream.

It’s clear that whatever cholesterol we do get from our food represents a surplus. And for most of us, sooner or later that surplus could contribute to cardiovascular disease. While most people can handle small amounts of dietary cholesterol with reasonable safety (up to about 100 milligrams a day, a little more than you’ll find in 3| ounces of skinless chicken breast or lean beef), Americans on average consume over 400 milligrams a day – a chronic cholesterol overdose. The obvious antidote is a simple but lifesaving one: Limit our intake of animal products, since they are the only source of dietary cholesterol. But that alone isn’t enough; it’s essential to limit our intake of saturated fat as well. Moreover, as we’ll learn shortly, to attain a truly safe serum cholesterol level we also have to increase our intake of foods that contain soluble fiber.

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