Consuming more cholesterol in your diet is linked to a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases.
Dietary cholesterol is found in substantial amounts in certain foods that come from animals, including egg yolks, shrimp, red meat, poultry, and dairy products. While nutrition experts used to warn against consuming too much cholesterol in your diet, that advice has largely been abandoned — because in most people, cholesterol in your diet doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on cholesterol in your blood.
Your body can make its own cholesterol, so you don’t need to get it from your food. And most mainstream advice about managing your cholesterol levels — both lowering your LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad”) cholesterol and raising your HDL (high-density lipoprotein, or “good”) cholesterol — has little to do with limiting cholesterol in your diet. That’s not to say your diet doesn’t matter when it comes to your blood cholesterol levels — saturated fat in your diet is known to raise unhealthy cholesterol levels, while food components like fiber, healthy fats, phytosterols (plant sterols), and antioxidants may improve your cholesterol levels. Heavy coffee consumption and certain coffee brewing methods are also linked to unhealthy cholesterol levels.
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Higher cholesterol consumption linked to increased type 2 diabetes risk
For the latest analysis, researchers were interested in examining a possible link between dietary cholesterol and developing type 2 diabetes. They used data from 11 large studies that tracked whether participants developed type 2 diabetes over time, which included a total of 355,230 participants from several countries. Participants’ dietary cholesterol was estimated based on dietary recall surveys. The researchers found that compared with participants who consumed the least cholesterol in their diets, those who consumed the most cholesterol were 15% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. In Western countries such as the United States and European countries, the link between dietary cholesterol and diabetes was even stronger — participants who consumed the most cholesterol were 19% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
The researchers also performed a detailed analysis to see if there was a dose-dependent relationship between dietary cholesterol and developing type 2 diabetes. Finding a dose-dependent relationship can be a good indicator that an outcome is actually caused by the behavior you’re assessing, rather than by some other factor. They found that for each increase of 100 milligrams in daily cholesterol intake, participants were 5% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. This increased likelihood was 6% for participants in Western countries, and just 1% in other countries — not a statistically significant difference in other countries, meaning that it could have been due to chance alone.
These findings suggest, the researchers wrote, that a low dietary cholesterol intake should be recommended to help prevent type 2 diabetes — especially among people with an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease who may be more vulnerable to dietary cholesterol.
Want to learn more about type 2 diabetes? Read “Diabetes Testing: Type 2 Diabetes,” “Type 2 Diabetes and a Healthy Family Lifestyle,” and “Welcome to Diabetes.”
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