Recently, the secretaries of health and agriculture in the United States revised dietary guidelines and said that dietary cholesterol was “no longer a nutrient of concern”.

The committees have finally acknowledged that there is no link between the amount of cholesterol that is eaten and the level of cholesterol in the blood. This change to the dietary guidelines was suggested last year, and was officially implemented during the first week of January this year.

As I mentioned in my book, the dietary cholesterol guidelines came out of the cholesterol consensus conference in 1984 - a recommendation was published not to consume more than 250-300mg of cholesterol per day - that’s about the amount of cholesterol found in one egg.

This recommendation was introduced despite the fact that there was absolutely no evidence at all that dietary cholesterol influences blood cholesterol levels. Something that was also covered extensively in Dr Uffe Ravnskov’s classic text The Cholesterol Myths.

In fact, even the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, published in 2001, stated that “dietary cholesterol has a relatively small and variable effect on blood cholesterol levels”.

Although this change in the guidelines is a step in the right direction, it really just illustrates the absurdness of the cholesterol idea (or lipid hypothesis) because the authorities are still clinging to the idea that cholesterol and saturated fat causes heart disease.

Of course, its not easy for the authorities to accept that they got it wrong for so long, and its not easy for those people who have built a career out of demonising cholesterol either. Like Dr John McDougall (author of several books promoting the avoidance of saturated fat and cholesterol) who has joined a small group of physicians who are suing the agriculture secretary over the change in the guidelines.