Dr. Danielle Belardo

So you have to look at multiple levels of evidence ranging from small randomized controlled trials to larger prospective cohorts that are longer studies where we look at essentially the dose of an intervention or a food and then the outcome with regards to heart disease or cancer risk or things like that over time.

And then once you synthesize all of these levels of evidence with research and nutrition, we can really kind of tease out, well, what is the best dietary pattern?

And that never points to an all animal based diet.

And so there's a few reasons for that.

One is we have a tremendous amount of research that shows us that foods that are high in saturated fat can raise your LDL cholesterol.

This is one of those myths that is online that LDL cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.

And that could not be further from the truth.

And actually, this isn't just from one study or two studies.

I mean, we have decades and decades of research that shows us that LDL cholesterol and ApoB, ApoB is the atherogenic lipoprotein that people often refer to online.

that this is directly related to atherosclerosis.

It's actually the only substrate required.

You could have no diabetes, no hypertension, no obesity.

The only thing that's required to develop coronary artery disease and heart disease is

elevated level of cholesterol, LDL cholesterol.

And so, you know, first knowing that that fundamental part, I mean, that's just science, that's just pure science, is a truth, that's actual fact.

Then we go down the lines of, okay, well, what raises cholesterol versus what lowers it?

We know that foods that are high in saturated fat, like an animal-based diet, raises your cholesterol, makes your risk for heart disease increase.

There's also things outside of cholesterol that eating an animal-based diet do.

And we have research that even shows us that by reducing some things like red meat and processed meats and things that are very high in saturated fat and replacing them with foods that are lower in saturated fat,

like replacing a fatty fish or plant proteins, can actually reduce heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular mortality in as little as two years.