"How to Reduce Cholesterol Oxidation"
A significant body of evidence indicates that oxidized cholesterol
may be one of the main triggers of Alzheimer's disease.
But that's not all.
Cholesterol oxidation products are associated with
the initiation and progression of multiple major chronic diseases,
including heart disease, diabetes, and kidney failure.
And they're produced when animal products are heated.
All forms of cooking can do it, since you can get maximum cholesterol oxidation
at only about 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
But is there some type of cooking that's worse than others?
Well, if you look at foal meat, which is like baby horse meat,
higher levels of oxidation in general were found in microwaved meat.
And indeed, microwaving chicken or beef appears to produce
about twice as much cholesterol oxidation than frying.
Whereas if you look at bacon,
raw bacon wasn't found to have any oxidized cholesterol.
It has cholesterol, like all animal products,
but it's not oxidized until you cook it.
Grilling seems to be the safest the first time around,
but then when you put it back in the fridge
and reheat it later using the same method, they all shoot up.
It's not just heat, though.
Although levels in raw meats are usually low,
concentrations tend to increase dramatically
after exposure to pro-oxidation agents such as light.
What are you supposed to do,
crawl inside the pig and eat the bacon from the inside?
No. You could wrap the meat in red plastic wrap.
Clear plastic wrap doesn't seem to work, but the red blocks
some of the light waves and can delay cholesterol oxidation.
This was for horse meat slices.
The problem is worse with sliced meat products
because more of the meat is exposed to air and light.
Same problem with ground meat; it's just so much more exposed.
Unless you keep meat in some kind of vacuum pack,
even in a dark refrigerator the oxygen exposure alone
can shoot up oxidation levels.
Or in the freezer.
Yeah, cooking raw fish can boost levels from 8 to 18,
but after a few months frozen fish—even raw—
starts out about ten times higher and just goes up from there.
And in terms of which meat is the worst, microwaved or fried,
chicken was twice as bad as beef.
The reason, it seems, has to do with the polyunsaturated fat content
of the muscle, which goes fish, then poultry, then pork, then beef, then lamb.
So white meat is more susceptible to cholesterol oxidation.
Yes, red meat has more saturated fat,
but fish and chicken tend to build up more oxidized cholesterol.
So, chicken and roasted salmon have been shown to generate greater
amounts of cholesterol oxidation products than other types of meat.
Surprisingly though, the highest increase of oxidized cholesterol in salmon
was found through steaming, mainly just because it's exposed to heat longer.
Cholesterol oxidation increased after each cooking procedure,
but steaming increased the total amount by more than 1000%.
There are two ways chicken meat may pull ahead, though.
One is if you feed the chickens rancid fat in the first place.
And unfortunately, all sorts of substandard stuff ends up
at the rendering plant to be turned into animal feed.
And also irradiation.
When chicken meat is irradiated to improve food safety
from an infectious disease standpoint,
it may diminish food safety from a chronic disease standpoint.
But, hey, it's better than dying from salmonella.
In terms of dairy, in my last video I talked about
the potential dangers of ghee, which made me wonder about UHT milk,
which stands for ultra-high temperature processing,
to make those little half-and-half no-refrigeration-needed coffee creamers.
That does seem to boost oxidized cholesterol levels by about 50%,
worse than just regular pasteurization,
though interestingly if you can find goat milk half-and-half, that would be safer.
Same problem with eggs.
Egg powder in processed foods is good for shelf life
but may not be so good for human life.
So that's like packaged food with eggs in it,
like pasta, many baked goods, mayonnaise.
So even people who stay away from egg eggs
may still be unwittingly exposed
through processed foods if they don't read the label.
If it's all about oxidation, why not just add synthetic or natural antioxidants
to the animal products themselves?
They've certainly tried,
like what about adding lemon balm tea to hamburger patties?
It didn't work, but that's likely because
they couldn't add enough without affecting the taste.
What about adding cherries?
They're red, would blend right in. And it worked!
Two different types of tart cherries significantly reduced
the cholesterol oxidation,
but meat with a cherry on top seems a little out of place.
How about just good old garlic and onions?
Here's the amount of oxidized cholesterol in a plain pork chop,
significantly reduced by adding onion and garlic,
though interestingly in chicken cholesterol oxidation
was helped by sage, but not garlic.
In fact, garlic may even accelerate fat oxidation.
So, there are several measures that can be taken
to reduce cholesterol oxidation in foods:
reducing the total cholesterol content in food by not cooking food
with cholesterol-containing fat like butter or lard;
maybe we can feed animals antioxidants before or add them afterwards;
use as-low-a-temperature to cook as possible;
use some kind of opaque vacuum packing or something.
But if you take a step back, only foods that start out
with cholesterol can end up with oxidized cholesterol.
So, the primary method, in terms of reducing cholesterol oxidation in foods,
may be to reduce the total cholesterol content of the food,
not just by avoiding adding extra with butter,
but instead centering one's diet around whole plant foods,
which don't have any cholesterol to get oxidized in the first place.