Andrew Huberman· PhD
The cholesterol you eat is esterified, and an esterified cholesterol molecule simply can't physically pass through that Niemann-pick C1-like 1 transporter. Now, we probably manage to de-esterify 10 to 15% of our dietary cholesterol. So in other words, there are small amounts of dietary cholesterol that do make their way into our circulation, but it represents a small fraction of our total body's pool of cholesterol. Again, this was known, even by Ancel Keys, the guy who turned fat into the biggest boogeyman of all time. Ancel Keys acknowledged this in the 1960s. Dietary cholesterol plays no role in serum cholesterol. Again, it took the American Heart Association another 60 years to figure that out. But even now they acknowledge that. Dietary cholesterol has no bearing.