Plant sterols, health claims and strategies to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

In this issue of the journal, Williams and colleagues report the results of their study of nineteen twoto five-year old healthy children who received three grams of stanol in a margarine or five grams of wheat fiber in breakfast cereal for one month periods in a randomized crossover design [1]. Stanol margarine reduced total cholesterol by 12.4% and LDL cholesterol by 15.5%, while wheat bran resulted in a non-significant 4% reduction in serum cholesterol. Reductions in LDL cholesterol of this order of magnitude are not unexpected in children at this dose of stanol.