Saturated Fats, Cholesterol Lard and Vitamin D

In the past year, I've become acquainted with a new food called Lard - well new to me anyways. As most children of my age raised in the US, my parent's made sure I was getting the healthiest fat possible - that being margarine. I remember my parents regarding lard as something of a poor man's food and TOTALLY unhealthy due to it's high cholesterol and saturated fat content. So you can imagine my surprise when I started reading that lard as in pig fat may actually be GOOD for you.

In my search to peal away dietary disinformation, I came across lard as a source of cooking fat/oil in Sally Fallon's book, Nourishing Traditions (_http://www.amazon.com/Nourishing-Traditions-Challenges-Politically-Dictocrats/dp/0967089735). This book is listed as a "cookbook" on the cover, but it goes far beyond just recipes and dives into serious research on the subject of health. One of the big points she makes is that the way we procure our food from the source of raw ingredients to the method of preparation can make a HUGE difference in the nutritional quality of the food. Things like soaking grains, flours, fermenting vegetables and dairy, heat of cooking, etc. She explains why certain steps are necessary in the food preparation process and backs it up with a lot of research. The book is highly recommended for those who want to cut through the dietary disinformation promoted by the "diet dictocrats" as she calls them or as the "pathocracy" as they're generally known here.

Her exposition of Fats and Cholesterol in the book's introduction is one of the most comprehensive discussion of the subject I've come across in recent years. If anybody is interested I can transcribe this 20-page or so section when I get the time. The basic point to understand here is that saturated fats and cholesterol are not the pair of evil villains that modern dieting gurus make them out to be. Here is what she has to say about lard under this section:

[quote author=Nourishing Traditions]Lard or pork fat is about 40 percent saturated , 48 percent monounsaturated (including small amounts of antimicrobial palmitoleic acid) and 12 percent polyunsaturated. Like the fat of birds, the amount of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in lard will vary according to the diet of the pigs. In the tropics, lard may also be a source of lauric acid if the pigs have eaten coconuts. Like duck and goose fat, lard is stable and a preferred fat for frying. It was widely used in America at the turn of the century. It is an excellent source of vitamin D, especially in the third-world countries where other animal foods are likely to be expensive. Some researchers believe that pork products should be avoided because they may contribute to cancer. Others suggest that only pork meat presents a problem and that pig fat in the form of lard is safe and healthy.[/quote]

The vitamin D line caught my attention, especially with all of the recent research on the health benefits of vitamin D as promoted by Dr. Mercola and others. From the perspective of living in a northern, temperate climate, there are few sources of fat or oil in this neck of the woods. We can't grow olive trees or find plentiful supplies of fish or whales. 4-legged animals have traditionally filled the role of fat production in this part of the world and in particular pigs as mentioned by Fallon. She also mentions that lard and all saturated fats in general have anti-microbial properties, especially for the intestines. Could it be that the increase in chronic stomach diseases and general lack of immunity from infectious diseases be partially due to the removal of lard from the diet? The lack of saturated fats would lessen the immunity of the stomach and the lack of vitamin D would lessen the overall immunity of the body, at least this seems logical to me if the research is correct.

I'm a regular reader of Dr. Mercola, so I'm aware of his promotion of Vitamin D. He claims that getting vitamin D from sunlight is the best way and that taking Vitamin D orally should be your last resort. Well that might be fine in an ideal world where we get all the free time to frolic in the sunlight for hours or at the least stand naked for periods of time in front of high energy lamps. Not only this, but to actually absorb this vitamin D from sunlight, one must bathe in a very specific way not to use soap on of the sun exposed skin! (_http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/12/Shocking-Update-Sunshine-Can-Actually-Decrease-Your-Vitamin-D-Levels.aspx) I'm sorry, but this seems a bit much to me. Personally I would rather have animals do this work for me and then ingest those substances such as Vitamin D from them if that is possible. It seems a little more efficient.

Now, believe it or not, it's actually hard to come across a valid number of how much Vitamin D is in a given amount of lard. The USDA seems to have somehow erased this data from it's website (_http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=297375). Here is what it says on the Weston Price foundation website:

_http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamindmiracle.html

[quote author=Weston Price Foundation]Food Sources of Vitamin D

USDA databases compiled in the 1980s list the following foods as rich in vitamin D. The amounts given are for 100 grams or about 3 1/2 ounces. These figures demonstrate the difficulty in obtaining 4,000 IU vitamin D per day from ordinary foods in the American diet. Three servings of herring, oysters, catfish, mackerel or sardines plus generous amounts of butter, egg yolk, lard or bacon fat and 2 teaspoons cod liver oil (500 iu per teaspoon) yield about 4,000 IU vitamin D-a very rich diet indeed!

[/quote]

Since these numbers come from portions of 100g. For lard, this equals about 1/2 cup or so. Based on the latest research, they now suggest about 4000IU of Vitamin D per day for an average individual. This means one would have to eat about 1 1/2 cup of lard per day to get the right dosage. That might seem a little unreasonable, even for people who regularly consume lard. I have an old-timer neighbor who tells me stories about what life was life while he was growing up in these parts. He talks about how his mother would pack him a lard sandwich for school. This was basically two pieces of bread generously slathered with lard in the middle. If the bread pieces are of average loaf size, then one is probably looking at 1/4 to 1/3 cup of lard, still not the recommended dosage, but it's probably more than the average person gets in their diet today. Not to mention people generally spent more time outdoors in those days as well, which might make up the difference (assuming they didn't shower with soap!).

Speaking of soap, lard used to be the main fat used in soap making around this same period. One would have to conduct studies to see if any of the vitamin D from the soap would pass through the skin during the process of bathing. It could be that the saponification process with the lye destroys the vitamin D, I don't have enough background in chemistry to know. Who knows, maybe soap residue of this kind might actually be healthy for you?

Vitamin D itself is actually quite stable and cooking it or freezing it will not destroy it's chemical structure, so it should be possible to use the lard in a wide variety of frying and backing applications and still derive the benefits from it's vitamin D content.

I also found this somewhat interesting:

_http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/28/if-you-choose-to-take-oral-vitamin-d-how-much-should-you-take.aspx?source=nl

[quote author=Dr Mercola]
If You Take Oral Vitamin D, Make Sure You Take the Right Kind

There is one other thing you need to be aware of if you choose to use an oral vitamin D supplement and that is that there are basically two types. The natural one is D3 (cholecalciferol), which is the same vitamin D your body makes when exposed to sunshine.

The synthetic one is vitamin D2, which is sometimes called ergocalciferol.

Once either form of the vitamin is in your body, it needs to be converted to a more active form. Vitamin D3 is converted 500 percent faster than vitamin D2.

Interestingly, it was previously thought that the kidney exclusively performed this function; at least that is what I was taught in medical school.

However, in 1998 Dr. Michael Holick, the person who discovered activated vitamin D, showed that many other cells in your body can make this conversion, but they use it themselves, and it is only the kidney that makes enough to distribute to the rest of your body.
[/quote]

I don't know if this a real connection or just a coincidence, but he mentions that Dr. Michael Holick's findings about how the kidney's are responsible for distributing adequate doses of vitamin D to the rest of the body. Well, it just so happens that the best source of fat from the pig (as claimed by chefs and others) comes from the area around it's kidney. This is also known as the "leaf fat".

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lard

[quote author=Wikipedia]Lard can be obtained from any part of the pig as long as there is a high concentration of fatty tissue. The highest grade of lard, known as leaf lard, is obtained from the "flare" fat deposit surrounding the kidneys and inside the loin. Leaf lard has little pork flavor, making it ideal for use in baked goods, where it is treasured for its ability to produce flaky, moist pie crusts. The next highest grade of lard is obtained from fatback, the hard fat between the back skin and flesh of the pig. The lowest grade (for purposes of rendering into lard) is obtained from the soft caul fat surrounding digestive organs, such as small intestines, though caul fat is often used directly as a wrapping for roasting lean meats or in the manufacture of pâtés.[/quote]

Perhaps, if the pig's physiology is anything like our own, then the pig's kidney also acts as the distributor of vitamin D to the rest of its body. Since vitamin D tends to accumulate in fat, perhaps the fat surrounding the kidneys is first to get saturated with vitamin D before getting to the rest of the pig's body. This would logically make it a higher source of vitamin D assuming vitamin D has to travel through this area first to get to the rest of the pigs body. I'm not sure if this comparison is useful, but I found it interesting. Perhaps to make the best use of the vitamin D we ingest or absorb, we also need to have fairly well functioning kidneys too?

Now, don't just run out to your local supermarket and pick up a bucket of lard! From the same Wikipedia section:

[quote author=Wikipedia]Industrially-produced lard, including much of the lard sold in supermarkets,[citation needed] is rendered from a mixture of high and low quality fat sources from throughout the pig.[8] It is typically hydrogenated[citation needed] (which produces trans fats as a by-product), and often treated with bleaching and deodorizing agents, emulsifiers, and antioxidants, such as BHT.[4][9] Such treatment makes lard shelf stable. (Untreated lard must be refrigerated or frozen to prevent rancidity.)[/quote]

So it may help to find a source of pig fat that you can trust. Recall that fat also accumulates a number of fat soluble toxins (such as PCBs, BPA and other fine petrochemicals), so if the pigs were fed a poor diet, then the chances are their fat will be less than health promoting. If you are interested in trying out lard, try to find a good source first. Rendering lard yourself is not too difficult, or so I'm told. The farmer I purchase mine from does his own rendering which he claims amounts to putting the lard chunks through a meat grinder and then cooking them on a VERY low heat for a 12 hour period or so. This can then be poured off in jars and refrigerated.

Ryan

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Wow, thanks for that Ryan. I feel vindicated now.
For years (on and off) I've been preparing mixture of pigs fat, sausages, meats, herbs, spices and used it for cooking, frying or just as a spread on bread. Whenever any of my non-eastern European friends discovered that I eat PIGS FAT (!) - it produced grimace of utter disgust on their faces and none of them would even taste it.
I grew up on it, it's in traditional eastern European diet. I'm told by those who visited Poland recently, that you can find it now (with piece of bread) on the menu of the finest restaurants as an entree.

You are right regarding finding good source of it. I wouldn't buy just lard as sold in supermarkets. I get it from the butcher (sometimes from local grower)- pieces of fat, that is usually discarded - cut away the skin, chop into small pieces, melt in iron cast pot, add cut sausages (chem-free), pieces of meat, herbs, spices, bit of apple and put it in jars.

As most children of my age raised in the US, my parent's made sure I was getting the healthiest fat possible - that being margarine. Huh? I remember my parents regarding lard as something of a poor man's food and TOTALLY unhealthy due to it's high cholesterol and saturated fat content.

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Yes, the art of brainwashing by pathocrats at it's finest.
I noticed, after migrating to Australia from Poland, that a lot of things here were done in opposite way to how they were done in homeland.
I fell for many of them, believing in superiority of western way - I was brainwashed by Hollywood and 'Radio Free Europe' (cia run radio beamed from Germany to Eastern Europe)

But I never fell for margarine. Thanks to my wonderful chemistry teacher in primary school - we actually made margarine in the classroom out of chemicals. Than we added one more chemical and produced ordinary house paint !
I always knew, that margarine was not a food.
Later, as I was learning more about food and chemicals, I realized that there is not much in the supermarket that I would consider 'for human consumption'.

Thanks again for your research.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Thanks for this! I, too, feel vindicated for all those fantastic pie-crusts and biscuits I made throughout the years with good lard. I very often made my own lard by rendering the fat from a ham. Of course, it probably was not the best source because, in the U.S., meats are loaded with chemicals. But still, NOTHING makes pie crust and southern style biscuits like lard! Even pure butter does not produce such fine pastry.

Nowadays, we use duck fat because it is widely available but maybe I'll ask my butcher for some pig fat and render it for some gluten free biscuit making with buckwheat flour?

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Laura said:

Thanks for this! I, too, feel vindicated for all those fantastic pie-crusts and biscuits I made throughout the years with good lard. I very often made my own lard by rendering the fat from a ham. Of course, it probably was not the best source because, in the U.S., meats are loaded with chemicals. But still, NOTHING makes pie crust and southern style biscuits like lard! Even pure butter does not produce such fine pastry.

Nowadays, we use duck fat because it is widely available but maybe I'll ask my butcher for some pig fat and render it for some gluten free biscuit making with buckwheat flour?

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You go girl! :D If you use a pastry blender to cut the lard in, it should work great.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Laura said:

NOTHING makes pie crust and southern style biscuits like lard! Even pure butter does not produce such fine pastry.

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My grandmother (a farm woman until she moved to the city in her 50s) used to render her own lard. She used to make "lard cookies", which sounds gross, but to this day I have never encountered a cookie quite as delicious and satisfying!

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

well in the eastern part of Balkans they use a lot of lard, they too make most delicious cookies using lard, similarly I was pretty much disgusted with the idea when it was first offered and took it just so as not to offend the host but as soon as I tasted it I couldnt stop eating.
They also use it in all kinds of breads and puff pastry and as Laura noticed it does give some special quality to pastry.
Apart from this there is a very popular savory delicacy which is basically nothing but little pieces of pork fat which are somehow made crunchy and are usually eaten as nibbles when consuming alcohol . Again at first I was grossed out but then I fell for the taste.

The idea of eating pork fat does make sense for people from colder climate but it doesn't at all in the warmer climate.

In fact the island where I currently live was under British occupation for several hundred years and obviously this influenced local eating habits. Instead of eating a lot of fish and light meat such as rabbit and goat all of the sudden the pork became staple meat source along with bacon and eggs for breakfast,sausages, baked beans etc.
After a century of this completely inappropriate diet in relation to climate the result is one of the highest rate of metabolic disorders in the EU such as diabetes, also highest rate of obesity. Before Brits showed up these diseases were unheard of locally.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Corto Maltese said:

there is a very popular savory delicacy which is basically nothing but little pieces of pork fat which are somehow made crunchy and are usually eaten as nibbles when consuming alcohol . Again at first I was grossed out but then I fell for the taste.

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In the southern U.S. they have something called "Fatback". The fat from the back of a pig is cured and smoked like bacon, then cut into strips like bacon, and baked or fried until crispy.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

PepperFritz said:

Corto Maltese said:

there is a very popular savory delicacy which is basically nothing but little pieces of pork fat which are somehow made crunchy and are usually eaten as nibbles when consuming alcohol . Again at first I was grossed out but then I fell for the taste.

Click to expand...

In the southern U.S. they have something called "Fatback". The fat from the back of a pig is cured and smoked like bacon, then cut into strips like bacon, and baked or fried until crispy.

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We call them "cracklings" and we don't smoke them. We fry them until most of the fat has been rendered (for use as lard) and then put the remaining pieces in the oven to bake until they were crunchy.

Edit: Edited typos and forgot this - Cracklings include the skin and are also called "pork rinds".

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

FireShadow said:

We call them "cracklings" and we don't smoke them. We fry them until much of the fat had been rendered (for use as lard) and then put the remaining pieces in the oven to bake until they were crunchy.

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I think that's it, even their balkan name corresponds to "cracklings" :)

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Corto Maltese said:

The idea of eating pork fat does make sense for people from colder climate but it doesn't at all in the warmer climate.

In fact the island where I currently live was under British occupation for several hundred years and obviously this influenced local eating habits. Instead of eating a lot of fish and light meat such as rabbit and goat all of the sudden the pork became staple meat source along with bacon and eggs for breakfast,sausages, baked beans etc.
After a century of this completely inappropriate diet in relation to climate the result is one of the highest rate of metabolic disorders in the EU such as diabetes, also highest rate of obesity. Before Brits showed up these diseases were unheard of locally.

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I tend to think that the diabetes and obesity in your island have other causes rather than pork and a warm climate. In Vietnam, which is much closer to the equator than your island, pork has always been the staple meat. Before the country opened up to globalization, diabetes and obesity were unheard of, but they became quite prevalent after. I guess it has something to do with the toxics in foods and the environment.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

It is my observation that people which inhabit certain areas of the earth in time develop preferences for the food that is best suited for their geo-climatological surroundings.

I do not know or have a proof that pork is a culprit in diabetes epidemics which happened here but common sense is telling me that its not very wise to eat pork meat in very warm climate. Think of the fat metabolism and energy release and also think of the diet of Eskimos in contrast to Bushmani of Kalahari desert.

Increase of pork consumption (actually complete substitution of all other meat with pork) could be one of the contributors to endocrine disorders here but this research is still the work in progress.

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

[quote author=RyanX 2 July 09] I have an old-timer neighbor who tells me stories about what life was life while he was growing up in these parts. He talks about how his mother would pack him a lard sandwich for school. This was basically two pieces of bread generously slathered with lard in the middle. [/quote]

Gosh! Reading that took me back! Lard or dripping sandwiches, with a generous sprinkling of salt, were a good 'filler' in post-war snack-less Britain. ('Dripping' is the fat that exudes from roasting meat during cooking, after it had been started off with a good dollop of lard, of course!)

Here's a recipe for Lardy Cake, which can be adapted for gluten-free substitute (osit - may be wrong!):

_http://www.greenchronicle.com/regional_recipes/lardy_cake_recipe.htm

And it really is delicious!

And another one for Welsh Farmhouse Lard Cake, which seems to be slightly richer:

_http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/cym/fetch-recipe.php?rid=cym-teisen-lard-ffermdy

Haven't tried this one, though. But it sounds yummy!

Re: Lard and Vitamin D

Corto Maltese said:

well in the eastern part of Balkans they use a lot of lard, they too make most delicious cookies using lard, similarly I was pretty much disgusted with the idea when it was first offered and took it just so as not to offend the host but as soon as I tasted it I couldnt stop eating.
They also use it in all kinds of breads and puff pastry and as Laura noticed it does give some special quality to pastry.
Apart from this there is a very popular savory delicacy which is basically nothing but little pieces of pork fat which are somehow made crunchy and are usually eaten as nibbles when consuming alcohol . Again at first I was grossed out but then I fell for the taste.

The idea of eating pork fat does make sense for people from colder climate but it doesn't at all in the warmer climate.

In fact the island where I currently live was under British occupation for several hundred years and obviously this influenced local eating habits. Instead of eating a lot of fish and light meat such as rabbit and goat all of the sudden the pork became staple meat source along with bacon and eggs for breakfast,sausages, baked beans etc.
After a century of this completely inappropriate diet in relation to climate the result is one of the highest rate of metabolic disorders in the EU such as diabetes, also highest rate of obesity. Before Brits showed up these diseases were unheard of locally.

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Doctors usually suggest a low-fat diet, which makes things generally worse as people get very hungry and eat foods that seemingly look healthy, but actually makes diabetes worse. Then they use all those low sugar substitutes which are full of poisons and still, full of "sugar"... To quote Al Sears, M.D., from "The Doctor's Heart Cure":

[...] Will's doctor insisted he would have to take insulin shots for the rest of his life. Will delivered mail for a living and worked out at the gym regularly so he was not overly sedentary. He said, "I'm eating healthy. I follow all the recommendations." But as Will talked more, it was clear that the advise he had been given was to eat a low-fat diet. This is the advice most diabetics receive and is amazingly, the dietary advice of the American Diabetic Association. This is exactly the wrong advice for a diabetic. Fat in the diet does not cause diabetes, starches do. What's more, when you eat low-fat you will eat more of the real culprit-starches. Will followed the advice of his doctor and the American Diabetic Association by avoiding sugar and fat, but no starches. In fact, he ate starches at every meal: cereal for breakfast, pasta for lunch, and potatoes and bread with dinner.

Will was surprised to learn that his body converts all those starches he eats into sugars in his body, flooding his bloodstream with glucose. Will switched to a diet of foods low on the glycemic index, and added several herbs and nutritional supplements. In several months, he no longer needed insulin shots; he was not taken insulin in several years now and has no signs of diabetes. [...] his insulin receptors switches reset to their "pre-diabetic" setting. The Center for Health and Wellness has treated hundreds of patients like Will, and by following this approach these people were able to overcome their diabetes.

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The book is from 2004 and I still think a diet should include an acceptable quantity of whole rice, for example. But it is still interesting that he managed to cure so many diabetics with dietary changes which includes protein at every meal, regardless of blood type, including red meat almost every day... But it is important to have a source of meat which is "free-farmed", as most growers fatten their animals as quickly as possible by feeding them cheap grain and "feedstuff": grain, candy, meat scraps (even from sick animals)... Which can make the meat a quite an inflammatory one.

In general, fat has being blamed for so many diseases, but as for dietary foods go, the most damage had come from products like dairy and gluten. There should be more info about that available to people. But actually, those are particular the foods that are promoted in our society. Al Sears basically took the US Department of Agriculture's Food Pyramid, which is a formula for dietary disaster, and he turned it upside down after removing the most obvious evil stuff.

Cholesterol-myth

I have been reading a web-site of a Hungarian Psychologist, his name is Gabor Szendi, _www.tenyek-tevhitek.hu.

He has articles about physical and drug abuse of the psychiatric institution, about health, the medical "business world", how the healers became killers for money! Unfortunately he has it most in Hungarian language.

I read a long article about the cholesterol-myth, and how the medical community leading people astray to telling them not to eat fat!
Fat is a serious and very important part of our diet, without it we would die!
What kind of fat is the question, yes.
We know that, margarine well advertised, but it is a killer!
Meanwhile I researched on cholesterol, I found a Danish independent (He don't get paid by Big Pharma!!!) scientist MD, PhD
Uffe Ravnskov.
I'm delighted to share it with you.


[quote author= Uffe Ravnskov]Here are the facts!

1 Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.

2 A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.

3 Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.

4 There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.

5 The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.

6 The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.

7 Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.

8 The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.

9 The Benefits Of High Cholesterol [/quote]

There is more is his web-site: http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

Re: Cholesterol-myth

I'm slowly reading the book 'The Cholesterol Hoax' by Sherry Rogers (about a 3rd of the way through) that goes in depth into some of the points you quoted. Statins lower cholesterol by blocking normal production of cholesterol in the liver.

Statin drugs work by poisoning a liver enzyme that makes cholesterol. When the body makes cholesterol, it uses many pathaways but one major bottleneck is a rate-limiting enzyme in the liver called HMG COA reductase. The statin category of cholesterol-lowering prescription medications all work by turning off or poisoning this main enzyme that the liver uses to make cholesterol

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She goes pretty in depth into why a person should never take statins.
Also,

The LDL cholesterol plasters cholesterol on to the arterial wall, but only if the LDL cholesterol is oxidized. LDL is only able to attach itself when it has sustained too much free radical damage from reactive oxygen species called free radicals

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Free radicals come from all the toxins inherent in daily living.

I'm finding the book full of good information if you are worried about cholesterol or interested in the topic. I have low HDL and the book has recommendations for individuals in that situation. Haven't tried them yet, but planning on exploring them.