What is the difference between dietary cholesterol and body cholesterol?
Dietary cholesterol is cholesterol that is ingested with food. Body cholesterol (serum cholesterol) is the measure of cholesterol in the blood.
My understanding is that dietary cholesterol intake has little to no effect on serum cholesterol measurements.
Take a look at Nutrition Made Simple on YT. There was an episode from about 3 months ago with an interview of Dr. Tom Dayspring. He’s a lipidemiologist. The information he gives is extremely interesting. And counters the claim that dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with blood serum. About 20% of the cholesterol in your blood comes from the food you eat. And your body can’t tell the difference between cholesterol you produce and cholesterol you eat. As far as your body is concerned, it’s all the same. Now, whether that has an effect on your blood serum cholesterol comes down to genetics. Your body will get rid of excess cholesterol, but some people (like me) suck at it. Which means a diet high in dietary cholesterol WILL raise my blood serum cholesterol.
And I’ve seen this first hand in myself. In early 2021 I had blood work done and my overall cholesterol was 193 with an LDLc of 124. A year or so later, it was down to 157 and 89 respectively. A drop of about 20% in my overall cholesterol, and nearly 30% in LDL. Why? Did my weight change? Nope. I was pretty similar in weight. Did my diet go from crappy to uber-healthy? Not really. My diet had been really healthy in 2021. What about activity level… that went up, right? Wrong. So what did it? In July 2021 I went full WFPB. I got rid of all animal products, and my dietary cholesterol intake dropped to 0.
Your body makes most of its cholesterol; the rest comes from food. Food quality also has some impact on your cholesterol profile (LDL vs HDL, triglyceride levels, etc). Genetics has some of the biggest impact on whether your cholesterol becomes high, but obviously food quality and overall lifestyle can have at least some impact too.