Nutrition
What do avocados do to your cholesterol?
Can Guacamole Lower Your Cholesterol As Well As Other Whole Food Products?–Dietary Fat Sources like Nuts, or is the just go crazy avocado Industry?
“ONcalled are the richest known fruit source for phytosterols,“The cholesterol-lowering nutrients found in plant foods”, boasts a review sponsored by the HASS Avocado Board. The crucial word, however, is fruit.
Yes, Avocados contain more phytosterols compared to other fruits, but phytosterols are fat-soluble substances. mMost other fruits have hardly any fat in them, S.or lawyers will obviously come out on top compared to other fruits. W.Hat if you compare the phytosterol content of avocados to nuts and seeds, although? An avocado has about 100 Milligrams of phytosterols. Ön the same scale, sesame and tahini to have 400 milligram; Pistachios, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds have around 300; Almonds, almond butter, flax seeds, and macadamia nuts have around 200; and even chocolate contains about twice as many phytosterols as avocadosas you can see in mine at 0:51 Video Are Avocados Good For Your Cholesterol?.
Although nuts and seeds have the highest levels of phytosterols overall the studies that have been carried out on the reduction “Poorly” Having LDL cholesterol with phytosterols Second hand Food supplements from 600 milligrams and go up to the thousands. So, Yes, you can lower LDL cholesterol by about 8 percent with a dose of phytosterols about 2,100 milligrams, but that would be 20 avocados a dayas you can see in mine at 1:17 Video. And 2,100 milligrams of phytosterols would be a lot of nuts too, BBut you can achieve an 8 percent decrease in LDL by just doing meal a handful of nuts, Just a single ounce giveYesas you can see in mine at 1:36 Video. So phytosterols are not the only componentS. of nuts responsible for Ride Cholesterol down. nuts got to to have other components, possibly Dietary fiber or other phytochemicals that contribute to theand cholesterol lowering effect. Power Avocados have such components, also? You don’t know until…they put it to the test.
As you can see in mine at 2:10 Video, There are studies that go back more than half a century the seems like show that if you add an avocado to people’s daily diet, their cholesterol will go down. However, if you remove the avocados every day, their cholesterol becomes goes up again, and then it drops back down when you add that Avocados back. The dates are pretty convincing–until You can see how the study was conducted. That Researcher not only Add an avocado. They swapped the end Animal fat. No wonder your cholesterol has dropped! Instead of a study of cholesterol and avocados, it might as well be cholesterol and lard or lard-onand almost all Studies on cholesterol and avocadoS. are like That.
What happened when Researcher carried out a meta-analysis of TIn Studies includeing Hundreds of people? If you put them all together and looked at the resultswhat did you find? IT appears that the addition of avocados resulted in a significant decrease in cholesterol and triglycerides–average about 17–Loss of points in bad LDL Cholesterol. but, almost all the Studies were substitution studies involving saturated fat has been removed of the nutrition of the people and Were avocados substituted in. IWhen you reduce saturated animal fats, your cholesterol will drops regardless. You can tell this rating was Not Funded by the avocado industry because of that Researcher point it out and say the “it IIt is important to know that replacing Avocados for saturated dietary fats as opposed to adding avocado to an already established basic diet is the greatest benefit. ” Simple There may be no benefits to adding avocado to cholesterol at all.
So yesS., the avocado industry is right in the thick of it saying that avocados are “a healthy butter substitute / Margarine, cheese, cream cheese,” but that’s a pretty low bar.
THE CENTRAL THESES
- Compared to any other fruit, avocados contain more phytosterols, the cholesterol-lowering nutrient found in plant foods, but phytosterols are fat-soluble and most fruits are very low in fat, so it’s not surprising that avocados top the list.
- If you compare the phytosterol content of avocados, chocolate, nuts and seeds to scale, nuts and seeds have the highest values overall, and even chocolate has about twice as many phytosterols as avocados.
- Bad LDL cholesterol can be lowered with doses of phytosterols equivalent to about 20 avocados or a single ounce of nuts (about the palm of your hand) per day.
- Most of the studies that show that cholesterol levels go down when a daily avocado is consumed and go back up again if avocados are not eaten before dropping again on resumption, not only did they include avocado in their diet, but they did also exchanged animal fat No wonder cholesterol levels fell with avocado consumption.
- Removing saturated fat from the diet and replacing it in avocados can lead to significant decreases in cholesterol and triglycerides, but simply adding avocado without reducing your intake of saturated animal fats does not seem to have any cholesterol benefits.
How about adding avocado to a plant-based diet? Would it be an advantage then? Learn more:
Why do we care about cholesterol? See, for example:
What should we shoot for? See Flashback Friday: Optimal Cholesterol Levels.
To learn more about cholesterol–Lower groceries, check out The best food for high cholesterol and The Benefits of Kale and Cabbage for Cholesterol.
In addition to adding cholesterol–Lower food, we Even need to reduce our intake of cholesterol –bring up Food. See:
In health,
Michael Greger, MD
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