Or is it a myth?
You have to approach cholesterol from a very nuanced perspective and it’s a very individualized thing. If you eat very fatty red meat or any meat that’s high in saturated fats your cholesterol will spike. That’s a fact. We have mechanistic data to back that up. There’s very little correlation or causation to lean red meat and lean meat protein in general raising cholesterol levels to the point you’re at a risk for a CV event. I eat 3 eggs a day like 5 days a week and red meat 2 out of 7 days of the week and my cholesterol is fine. I just don’t eat a ton of high-saturated-fat meal. Which si funny because the posters on here are vehement that if you eat cholesterol your blood cholesterol rises and no one that I know has their blood lipid panels come out anything else but spotless. The key is cutting down your saturated fat intact and choosing leaner proteins. Even then some people can eat a ton of saturated fat and their lipid panels come back surprisingly well. Even then you’d have to do a coronary artery test to really see if everything is ok.
Mostly myth. The body needs cholesterol and your liver naturally makes around \~80% of it each day, while the other 20% comes from food.
Foods with cholesterol would simply downregulate production in the liver. But excess saturated fat would increase LDL and raise cholesterol higher than normal ranges on your blood test results.
I would say yes, red meat will probably raise cholesterol because saturated fat will raise cholesterol.
The more important question is: Is cholesterol inherently bad for you? I would say no, but it can depend on your current condition of health.
I care more about my HDL/Trig ratio than I do how much total cholesterol I have in my blood. I think what matters most than just the regular LDL-C you get on a standard lipid panel is the amount of APo-B you have, in adition to the LDL-P.
Saturated fats increase LDL - this is the stuff that will line your arteries and can cause problems (really bad if you eat a ton and have poor cholesterol readings already)
Monounsaturated/Polyunsaturated increase HDL - this is like a magnet that picks up cholesterol and brings it back to the liver to be processed - you want more of these
Red meat itself won’t raise cholesterol, its the saturated fats in red meat that will. If your eating lean cuts of red meat as well as having a diet low in saturated fats in general then red meats nothing to worry about as long as you stick to lean cuts.If cholesterol is a worry of yours try to focus your diet around foods high in poly and monounsaturated fats and eat more soluble fibre, eg from fruit, oats, etc.