Discussion
RCC
RCC
In this study, we aimed to examine the effect of increasing the calcium The faecal fat excretion rates observed here (4.48–5.72 g/day) were slightly lower than those reported in Bendsen et alHowever, it should be noted that it is unlikely that the protein content here reduced the availability of Ca for soap formation, since the fat excretion rates observed here, and relatively high Ca excretion, suggest that Ca was still available, and thus does not support the formation of unabsorbed soaps as being solely responsible for the LDL–c lowering, suggested by other studies. In the initial power calculations to estimate the difference between the high and low Ca diets, we had assumed a linear relationship between Ca and fat excretion but had not considered potential effects of protein which could impact that linearity. It should also be noted that we observed lower post-intervention LDL-c in the HCC diet vs the RCC and the RCC + Supp diets, despite a lack of increase in FFE following the HCC diet, which would also indicate this was not solely due to soaps excretion.In both studies by Bendsen et alBoon et alNo differences were observed here in the individual fatty acids, other than linoleic acid (Table S2), but after Bonferroni adjustment of the A number of strengths and limitations to this study should be noted. Firstly, the higher than expected attrition rate was a major limitation and unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the researchers, it was not possible to extend the study, due to the cheeses being specifically made for this study and aged for 8 months prior to the interventions. Additional limitations include the lack of a habitual calcium intake measure, and that cheeses were not measured for their P content. A measure of habitual Ca would have allowed us to identify any low and high habitual consumers, who potentially might have responded differently in their lipid concentrations. Regarding the P content of the cheeses, calcium phosphate has been shown to reduce LDL-c concentration [