High fiber diet just as effective as prescription drugs in reducing cholesterol

• A diet rich in fiber and vegetables lowered cholesterol just as much as taking a statin drug, Canadian researchers reported on Monday.
• They said people who cannot tolerate the statin drugs because of side-effects can turn to the diet, which they said their volunteers could easily follow.
• David Jenkins of St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto and colleagues created what they called a diet "portfolio" high in soy protein, almonds, and cereal fiber as well as plant sterols -- tree-based compounds used in cholesterol-lowering margarines, salad dressing and other products.
• They tested their diet on 34 overweight men and women, comparing it with a low-fat diet and with a normal diet plus a generic statin drug, lovastatin.
• Each volunteer followed each regimen for a month, with a break in between each treatment cycle.
• Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Jenkins and colleagues said the low-fat diet lowered LDL -- the low-density lipoprotein or "bad" cholesterol -- by 8.5 percent after a month.
• Statins lowered LDL by 33 percent and the "portfolio" diet lowered LDL by nearly 30 percent.
• The portfolio was rich in soy milk, soy burgers, almonds, oats, barley, psyllium seeds, okra and eggplant.
• The Almond Board of California helped fund the study, as did several food makers and the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
• They also included a plant sterol margarine product.
• The researchers said nine volunteers, or a quarter of the group, got their lowest LDL levels from being on the portfolio diet.
• The volunteers all felt full on the, diets although the "portfolio" diet resulted in more bowel movements, the researchers said.