2.2. Inclusion Criteria
The participants had to be non-smoking males, not be on any restrictive diets or cholesterol-lowering medications, and not have a total cholesterol (TC) above 350 mg/dL. The participants were requested not to change their habitual diet or level of physical activity. Due to limited funding, we chose to recruit men only, and not women only or a combination of men and women. Statistical power calculations were based on changes in HDL-C concentration in normocholesterolemic men in response to a ground beef intervention ([