CHOLESTEROL: THE CLOSER TO VEGAN, THE BETTER

A new study from the University of Toronto shows that in terms of lowering cholesterol - something meat-eaters spend millions of dollars on drugs to do - the closer your diet is to vegan, the better off you are. The "portfolio" diet is described as "a near-vegan regimen, meaning no meat, eggs, poultry, fish or dairy." (Sounds like "a vegan regimen" to me, but I couldn't find a source that explained what made it only "near." Maybe they mean it's not quite vegan because the dieters don't actually care about ahimsa.)

"Can a modified portfolio approach help? To answer that, Jenkins and his team enrolled 66 adults with elevated blood cholesterol in a one-year study of the diet," explains this Washington Post article. "The study found a direct link between how closely participants followed the portfolio plan and how much their blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) improved. LDL is directly linked to heart-disease risk. Nearly a third of participants who stuck closest to the plan's goals lowered their LDL levels by 20 percent or more, an improvement that rivals the use of low-dose statins."