Hi Vonnovich,

It is interesting that you pointed out the very thing that has been plagueing me about this article. You see, Dr. Enig says that protein powders have oxidized cholesterol and I drink protein powder everyday as do many LCers. [Whew! Just read the label on my protein powder and it is 0 g fat and 5 mg cholesterol so even if the 5 mg is oxidized, it won't impact.]

I don't believe that Dr. Enig was saying that oxidized cholesterol was added to powdered milk or to protein powder. Rather I believe what she was saying is that anytime you make dairy products into powder the inherent cholesterol in the dairy product becomes oxidized through drying it into powder. Both whey protein and milk come from dairy products that naturally contain cholesterol. When these are dried, the cholesterol becomes oxidized according to Dr. Enig. She is also saying that some low fat milks are made from mixed dried milk with whole milk. Therefore, these would also contain oxidized cholesterol. Although I don't know if it is true of liquid milk products that they contain powdered milk because I've never heard of this before. However I do know that "milk solids" are a common ingredient in many foods and whey protein is a dryed dairy product that is in protein powder. But strangely enough I've never read anywhere before that drying milk or whey protein makes the cholesterol oxidize. Dr. Enig's point is that oxidized cholesterol would clog your arteries so if dried milk protein was added to water and used as a liquid cholesterol diet in the studies she mentioned, then of course the people or animals in the study would get clogged arteries from cholesterol (or at least this type of unnatural oxidized cholesterol.)

Here is Dr. Enig's quote:
"But the biggest flaw was that the subjects receiving cholesterol did so in the form of reconstituted powder—a totally artificial diet. Mattson’s discussion did not even address the possibility that the liquid formula diet he used might affect blood cholesterol differently than would a whole foods diet when, in fact, many other studies indicated that this is the case. The culprit, in fact, in liquid protein diets appears to be oxidized cholesterol, formed during the high-temperature drying process, which seems to initiate the buildup of plaque in the arteries.33 Powdered milk containing oxidized cholesterol is added to reduced fat milk—to give it body—which the American public has accepted as a healthier choice than whole milk. It was purified, oxidized cholesterol that Kritchevsky and others used in their experiments on vegetarian rabbits."