High evolutionary cost of synthesizing cholesterol led to a system that prioritizes maintaining high cholesterol levels, which is now a disadvantage in an energy-abundant environment.

“The evolutionary cost of making cholesterol is enormous um I mean it's a very labor intensive step right I I can't remember the number of atps that are required to make a molecule of cholesterol but it's in the 10 right like it could could be 40 or something to that effect and so we evolved to have a system that prioritized having a lot of cholesterol being able to keep a lot of it around um because again this was an energy conserving system now this serves us no benefit today because today we can make plenty of it and we are we are in an energy abundant environment which we were not in you know hundreds of thousands of years ago and so this this is a bit of an unfortunate vestage of our past much in”