Howard,

actually, the Indian Hindu were not the people I had in mind, but I buy you explanation about the insect supplement anyway. So I back of to a 99.5 % vegetarian diet. :-) If it in reality is 99.2, 99.5 or 99.8 is nothing I wish to dispute, because obviously nether you nor I think that is a good and healthy diet.

The study on calorie restriction was a correlative (comparing, not experimental) study so you are right that all other factors were not held constant. Factors that could be controlled (age, sex, etc) was controlled for as far as possible and of the factors that differed caloric intake was the one that varied the most, and the CR-restriction group had superior values of all measured CD risk factors. Diet composition sure varied, but not hugely and the result was not in favour of the “fat-eaters”.

This is citation from the discussion of the cited article and the references they gave:
“Of the risk factors documented by epidemiological studies, elevated serum cholesterol has the distinction that it can induce development of atherosclerosis in the absence of other risk factors. This is evident in people with familial hypercholesterolemia (23) and has been demonstrated repeatedly in studies on animals (24). Furthermore, lowering cholesterol levels has been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease mortality (25).”

23. Goldstein, J. L., Hobbs, H. H. and Brown, M. S. (2001) in “The metabolic & molecular bases of inherited disease, eds. Scriver, Baudet, Sly % Valle (McGraw-Hill, New York), pp. 28-63-2913.

24. Reardon, C. A. & Getz, G. S. (2001) Curr. Opin. Lipidol. 12:167-173.

25. Gotto, A. M. Jr. & Grundy, S. M. (1999) Circulation 99: 1e-7.

It will be no problem to come up with more references on the connection between high cholesterol levels and CVD, but I need a day or two, and it feels as such a widely accepted correlation that it is somewhat a waste of time. The much more interesting question is if and how diet composition affects cholesterol levels.

Cheers - JHT