[JPKab]

Dietary cholesterol has been thoroughly debunked as a cause of heart disease. Starchy,sugary diets and the elevated triglyceride levels they lead to are much stronger in their link, resulting in a very accurate indicator of heart-disease risk, the HDL/Triglyceride ratio.

Eggs are loaded with HDL in addition to LDL, so they actually boost the top number. However, drinking soda or eating sugary pancakes in the same day will radically increase the bottom number.

I became keenly interested in the science on cholesterol and diet ten years ago, because my father, who has been a vegan since the mid 90's, had his first heart attack. He's subsequently had more. He consumes zero animal products, and we have no heart disease in our family history.

Edit:

Your food politics doc you linked to is just AWFUL. It makes a point about industry funding of cholesterol research since the 1990's, but ignores the immense funding and lobbying by the agricultural commodities producers (General Mills, for example) to push the original lipid hypothesis science that spurred "eggs kill you" thinking in the 1970s. I love how they use this basic correlation (increased funding and cholesterol being vindicated) to conclude causation. That's the flawed thinking that led to the bullshit nutritional standards we have today.