There's no cholesterol in space. What are we waiting for to colonize the entire universe? Oh I can't wait for a nice brisk Martian Fall walk among the rusty boulders, breathing thin CO2 as every cell in my body is bombarded by radiation. But Elon Musk's mansion will be awesome!

I took an IQ test once. I'm also really fat. Taking tests make you fat! I didn't do well on my test. It was online.

Donnchadha: So.... 150?

Aww...I thought the headline said, "Children under 11 now being tazered."

I am disappoint.

Crosshair: Only in America can the effective elimination of hunger and starvation be seen as a bad thing. Africa must be so happy about it beating the obesity epidemic.

So... dying of starvation and dying of heart disease are the only options then?

=Smidge=

Smidge204: Crosshair: Only in America can the effective elimination of hunger and starvation be seen as a bad thing. Africa must be so happy about it beating the obesity epidemic.

So... dying of starvation and dying of heart disease are the only options then?

=Smidge=

...who said we've effectively eliminated hunger and starvation here in America?

While death by starvation is really rare in America, it still happens - more closely related to mental disorders, like anorexia, than to the general inavailability of food. However, hunger is anything but "eliminated" in America.

One in six Americans has to deal with hunger. It's not a "homeless problem", but a "too many people making too little money to eat" problem - working families are increasingly "food insecure." We have access to cheap calories, but not cheap nutrition. 75% of us are deficient in vitamin D. We're not dropping dead of pellagra or being deformed by rickets, but we're instead developing other disorders, like diabetes, at an increasing rate because sugars and starches are cheap but nutrition's expensive, and we're buying cheap foodstuffs to keep bellies full instead of buying nutritive foodstuffs to keep bodies fed.

FormlessOne: Smidge204: Crosshair: Only in America can the effective elimination of hunger and starvation be seen as a bad thing. Africa must be so happy about it beating the obesity epidemic.

So... dying of starvation and dying of heart disease are the only options then?

=Smidge=

...who said we've effectively eliminated hunger and starvation here in America?

While death by starvation is really rare in America, it still happens - more closely related to mental disorders, like anorexia, than to the general inavailability of food. However, hunger is anything but "eliminated" in America.

One in six Americans has to deal with hunger. It's not a "homeless problem", but a "too many people making too little money to eat" problem - working families are increasingly "food insecure." We have access to cheap calories, but not cheap nutrition. 75% of us are deficient in vitamin D. We're not dropping dead of pellagra or being deformed by rickets, but we're instead developing other disorders, like diabetes, at an increasing rate because sugars and starches are cheap but nutrition's expensive, and we're buying cheap foodstuffs to keep bellies full instead of buying nutritive foodstuffs to keep bodies fed.

Wow, another scare mongering story to create employment for unionized social service workers. Nutritious food is not expensive and can be cooked in reasonable amounts of time - in fact I save a ton of money on food by doing so. The poor are not fat because they can't afford chicken and frozen broccoli - they're fat because they're too damn lazy to cook it.

ZAZ: In related news, pharmaceutical companies have found a new marketing angle to sell drugs to children.

This. And Mickey D's can start selling Lipitor Double Cheeburger Happy meals by prescription.

Crosshair: Only in America can the effective elimination of hunger and starvation be seen as a bad thing. Africa must be so happy about it beating the obesity epidemic.

You are an amazing troll and I want to have your troll babies.

if you were serious though, here is what is wrong with your skepticism. Your logic seems sound, and the irony is, I agree, impeccable. But American food companies are using far more fructose, and far more manufactured (and untested) additives than ever. As in, ever, as in, the entire history of our species. The entire diet of the USA has effectively been replaced in the past 25 years with a new diet which looks the same, tastes very similar, and has the same name on its package, but in reality is extremely different.

The US diet of the last 25 years does not, in fact, beat hunger. That's what explains the seeming paradox. The irony, of course, remains.

Look, unlikely most things (such as your weight, your blood pressure, etc)... cholesterol is almost ENTIRELY determined by genes. There's about 5 levels. Very low, low, medium, high, very high.

If you're at very low, you could eat pure fat and you'll never have high cholesterol. If you're at very high, you're farked.

The other three you could go up or down a little... but for the most part, you are what you are.

/But it's definitely good to keep it as low as your genes allow and start young before the damage starts.
//And for cholesterol checking it's nothing more than a pinprick blood test, so no harm, no foul.

jake3988: If you're at very high, you're farked.

Except that serum cholesterol isn't strongly correlated with any disease. Density of lipoprotein is linked to heart disease, and triglyceride count is linked to obesity, but serum cholesterol was only ever used because it was easy to measure and Dr.s assumed it would be related to numbers that actually indicate something.

Pro Tip: A cholesterol Test can very (lab to lab) +/- 60 pts

So, before we start testing kids for "high cholesterol", can someone explain what a healthy cholesterol level is for each age bracket?
What does it matter? Well, here's a hint: what is a healthy resting heart rate?

Warrener: jake3988: If you're at very high, you're farked.

Except that serum cholesterol isn't strongly correlated with any disease. Density of lipoprotein is linked to heart disease, and triglyceride count is linked to obesity, but serum cholesterol was only ever used because it was easy to measure and Dr.s assumed it would be related to numbers that actually indicate something.

Yep. The only way cholesterol is linked to heart disease is through Statins. Lipitor lowers serum cholesterol and lowers the risk of heart disease, but they don't know if the lowering of cholesterol has anything to do with the actual decreased risks of heart disease.

TFA: "You have to start early. It's much easier to change children's behavior when they're 5, or 10, or 12" than when they're older, said Blumenschein, who treats many children with high cholesterol and supports the screening advice.

Well, there's one person whose cholesterol is 200 points higher than IQ. I overhauled my diet in my twenties. My wife did the same. And a good friend of mine. And my sister.

Hell, one of my cats did it, and cats are as stubborn as any kid. It's really not that hard. The main obstacle is ignorance. If you just tell someone to do something, people are retarded so they'll do the opposite just to piss you off.

Alkony: So, before we start testing kids for "high cholesterol", can someone explain what a healthy cholesterol level is for each age bracket?

Cholesterol is about as insightful to one's health as weight. I had a friend in school who weighed 260 pounds as a teenager. Sounds heavy, right? But now what if I told you the kid was 6'7", a wrestler and a football lineman? Of course, it'd be a serious problem if the kid was 5', but you see what I mean.

We can actually carry this analogy further. The reason why weight is useless is because you have to break down what the weight is. In the case of my friend, the weight was largely muscle. It's a problem if the weight is fat. In the case of cholesterol, it's not the amount so much as what's carrying it around. If the cholesterol carriers are HDL (as opposed to LDL), then you're good. HDL is to cholesterol what muscle is to weight. LDL is like fat, and in fact the two correlate. An obese person is more likely to have high LDL. Try to keep LDL below 100 mg/dL.

FWIW, here's how malnutrition leads to heart attack:
LDL carries cholesterol under the arterial wall.
Due to lack of antioxidants, free radicals break down the LDL.
Body's immune system attacks the cholesterol and converts it to plaque
Over the years the plaque builds up until the inside wall bursts (leading to an infarction), e.g. heart attack or stroke

This process is, to a large extent, COMPLETELY unavoidable. It's like miles on a car. If the car's getting used at all, it's getting wear and tear. Question is where the miles are coming from. A healthy diet is like open freeway miles in a warm climate; you might make it 90 years even if you didn't win the gene lottery. 90 years isn't a bad life. Junk food is like off-roading. More fun in the short term, but you'll break down a lot faster. Modern medicine might keep you alive, but like a car that's in the shop every week, your last 20-30 years are going to be increasingly miserable and high-maintenance.