Diet and cholesterol

I posted a comment over at Nutraingredients.com where Shane Starling asserts that a new study shows that diet and olive oil are superior to drugs for heart disease. Read the study for yourself and see what you think.

 The authors of this study assert that a mediterranean diet reduces atherosclerosis more than drugs.

Unfortunately, that is not what they tested.

Their study compared the effects of three diets. They did not control for the use of lipid-lowering drugs, the rates of which were different between the groups. Further the authors did not report statistical tests of these differences.

Their primary outcome was not atherosclerosis, nor heart disease (such as heart attack or death). Their primary outcome was the level of apolipoprotein in the blood.

An accurate title for this article would be: "Olive oil and nuts reduces one part of your cholesterol more than a low-fat diet."