Dietary Carbohydrate and Serum Cholesterol in Rats

Abstract

The influence of various dietary carbohydrates on serum cholesterol in rats was studied with hypercholesterolemic diets containing a variety of carbohydrates. Experiments with sucrose, pregelatinized potato starch, glucose and fructose confirmed that animals fed sucrose had higher serum cholesterol levels than those fed starch and that animals fed glucose did not vary significantly from those fed starch. In experiments with carbohydrates of various chain lengths including 3 pregelatinized starches, 3 disaccharides and 2 monosaccharides, the shorter the chain length the higher the serum cholesterol level. Monosaccharides are an exception. The monosaccharide exception may be glucose alone, with only carbohydrates containing other than glucose units being hypercholesterolemic. With several different mixtures of starch and sucrose as the dietary carbohydrate, regression analysis of serum cholesterol showed a linear relation of significant slope. The larger the proportion of dietary sucrose, the higher the serum cholesterol.