Do you find Flora or Benecol drinks disagree with you?

[DakCB-UK]

I was told to try taking stanol or sterol products and I tried the Flora drinks but they disagreed with me. The Benecol ones are OK. Anyone else able to take one but not the other?

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My own view is if you have very high cholesterol - you take medication ( bearing in mind the contentious view that some people don't believe high cholesterol is bad for you in the first place) or if you don't have high cholesterol - you don't. Disregarding cholesterol - I think the food industry has moved too far away from natural products. Milk is a good example. Most people drink semi-skimmed milk. This has 2% fat. Full fat milk (blue top) is only 4% fat. Most dieters will tell you to eat food with less than 5% fat. Statisticians will tell you semi-skimmed has 50% less fat than full fat. Most people don't drink pints of milk a day. Similar arguement with butter. Do you want 'butter' or do you want a vegetable oil and butter mix, held together with chemicals, perfumes, colours etc?

[DakCB-UK]

Hi Traci. Thanks for the answer. Glad you feel statins alone work well enough for you. I'd like to cut my statin dose if I could, so I continue paying the money for now, but they are three times the price of my prescription, so I know what you mean!

Architect1337. I think I don't understand your point. So these drinks are functional foods invented by people, but butter doesn't occur in nature, nor do some of the more recent statins. I'm not against fiddling with food. I bake bread with a high oat bran content to try to reduce my cholesterol so that's a man-made functional food really, but I think it's still better than factory bread with its cheap flour and strange additives.

[Aliwally]

I was interested to find out that foods fortified with plant stanols are not allowed to be sold in Canada as they are not convinced about either their long term safety or effectiveness. In fact, with some people who have problems absorbing them, it can actually increase their cardio vascular risk.

Then read another recent article which said they are safe and effective! This led on to another article which said there is a difference between plant sterol esters and plant stanol esters. At this point I gave up !