[cageface]

The dangers of excessive protein intake are very well documented. A simple Google search turns up so many references. Here's one from the Mayo clinic:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

Saturated fat intake has been shown to boost serum cholesterol and increase risk of CVD in literally hundreds of direct feeding mechanistic trials. Genetic variability of cholesterol is high enough that cross-sectional studies are not appropriate for studying this.

https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/10/04/how-to-design-saturate...

In other words, ingesting saturated fat and cholesterol will raise your cholesterol levels and increase your risk of CVD but your baseline risk depends a lot on your genes.

[elhudy]

The mayo clinic link is actually reaffirming my opinion:

>For most healthy people, a high-protein diet generally isn't harmful, particularly when followed for a short time. Such diets may help with weight loss by making you feel fuller. However, the risks of using a high-protein diet with carbohydrate restriction for the long term are still being studied.

They are still being studied - poorly at that.

The second link is hilarious in that it fails to even describe the two types of LDL cholesterol, but lumps them both in as "bad" - which is typical of the "cholesterol is bad" crowd. In fact - the first study I clicked on in the nutritionfacts.org fails to mention the same. How can you do a study on cholesterol without even testing the two types of LDL? Frankly, it's embarrassing and is absolutely not mechanistic as you say.

Once again, these meta studies are attempting to show that a diet with lowered saturated fat intake is better in the long run than your average diet. This is not something that anyone is debating. However, it absolutely can not be misinterpreted as proof that high protein/saturated fat intake, in all cases, is bad. Which is exactly the mistake all of these authors are making, and is why there are many intelligent people on the other side of this discussion as well.

[cageface]

"Large" LDL is marginally less dangerous than "small" LDL but it still significantly raises your risk of CVD:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cholesterol-size-matte...

[elhudy]

>"Large" LDL is marginally less dangerous than "small" LDL

Neither large nor small cholesterol are "dangerous" - it's black-and-white opinions like this that make the nutrition industry so difficult for laymen to follow. They are both healthy, in that without cholesterol you would die. Excessive amounts of certain cholesterols in ratio to others just happen to be symptoms of underlying eating disorders. The author states that:

"She ... argues that HDL, so-called good cholesterol, also rises maintaining the ratio of bad to good. This is the study she cites to support that assertion. But instead of cherry-picking this one study that she performed with Egg Board money, involving 42 people, if you look at a meta-analysis, if you look at the balance of evidence, the rise in bad with increasing cholesterol intakes is much more than the rise in good."

However, it is known that the ratio of HDL to total cholesterol is a just as good as if not a better predictor of heart health. That's why it is generally used... [1]

There are many documented cases of high protein diets (or more specifically - low carb) achieving better cholesterol ratios [2][3][4]. There are also many more studies that address the significance of LDL size, than what the author you linked addresses [4][5][6]

[1] Mensink, Ronald p., et al. “Effects of dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates on the ratio of serum total to HDL cholesterol and on serum lipids and apolipoproteins: a meta-analysis of 60 controlled trials” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 77.5 (2003): 1146-1155.

[2] Bueno, Nassib Bezerra, et al. “Very-low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet v. low-fat diet for long-term weight loss: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.” British Journal of Nutrition 110.07 (2013): 1178-1187.

[3] Brinkworth, Grant D., et al. “Long-term effects of a very-low-carbohydrate weight loss diet compared with an isocaloric low-fat diet after 12 mo.” The American journal of clinical nutrition 90.1 (2009): 23-32.

[4] Merchant, Anwar T., et al. “Carbohydrate intake and HDL in a multiethnic population.” The American journal of clinical nutrition 85.1 (2007): 225-230.

[4] Otvos, James D., et al. “Clinical implications of discordance between low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and particle number.” Journal of clinical lipidology 5.2 (2011): 105-113.

[5] Meisinger, Christa, et al. “Plasma oxidized low-density lipoprotein, a strong predictor for acute coronary heart disease events in apparently healthy, middle-aged men from the general population.” Circulation 112.5 (2005): 651-657.

[6] Parthasarathy, Sampath, et al. “Oxidized low-density lipoprotein.” Free Radicals and Antioxidant Protocols. Humana Press, 2010. 403-417.