Low cholesterol increases child death rates
In 1991 the US National Cholesterol Education Programme recommended that children over two years old should adopt a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet to prevent CHD in later life. A table showing a good correlation between fat and cholesterol intakes and blood cholesterol in seven to nine-year-old boys from six countries was published to support this advice. What it did not show, however, was the even stronger correlation between blood cholesterol and infant and childhood deaths in those countries.[1]
As is clearly demonstrated in the Table below, the child death rate rises dramatically as blood cholesterol levels fall. And low cholesterol appears to be correlated with increased child death rates
That doesn't mean that the one necessarily causes the other, but added to the other evidence across the age ranges, it does support such a conclusion.
| Blood Cholesterol (mmol/L) |
Childhood deaths |
|
| Finland | 4.9 | 7 |
| Netherlands | 4.5 | 9 |
| USA | 4.3 | 12 |
| Italy | 4.1 | 12 |
| Philippines | 3.8 | 72 |
| Ghana | 3.3 | 145 |
Reference
1. Child mortality under age 5 per 1,000. 1992 Britannia Book of the Year. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago.Part 4: Child deaths
Part 5: Middle aged deaths
Part 6: Elderly Death — 1 | Part 7: Elderly Death — 2 | Part 8: Elderly Death — 3
