Cholesterol, anyone?

When I was a young man, an eon ago, the universal phobia was the disease tuberculosis or TB, for short, and when this topic was discussed voices would be lowered several decibels, very often to almost inaudible whispers and sometimes the disease would be alluded to as TZ by the superstitious ostensibly for fear of angering the gods who might cause the speaker to come down with the affliction for daring to talk about the disease openly. Then later tuberculosis lost its lustre and was replaced by cancer or euphemistically referred to as the "big C" . At the time when cancer was the pet fear, know-alls would come forth with all sorts of recommended "sure cures" and advice on what food should be avoided in order not to fall prey to the dreadful disease. Then cancer was replaced by aids and once we were educated enough to realize that aids could be avoided if we did not share needles and practised safe sex we moved on. Today the favourite topic of doom is cholesterol. A lot of people are obsessed with cholesterol. They go for their yearly cholesterol level checks, they take cholesterol lowering drugs and they avoid certain foods like the plague and as a result their lives become that much duller. A friend of mine was put on cholesterol lowering drugs by his doctor and every evening he would suffer an attack of nausea and disorientation. Very often he did not know where he was or what he was doing!
The other day I was in a queue at an economy rice stall when a voice behind me said, "Aiyoh, you dare to eat squids, ah? They are so full of cholesterol!"
Squids, prawns, crabs and lobsters (The latter item one can hardly afford nowadays because they cost a bomb!) are my favourite and as far as I eat sensibly I don't think I should worry about the extra cholesterol that comes with them. If I feed on squids every meal every day, I must be crazy or I must be tired of living but I feel that two squids with my meal once a fortnight or once a month shouldn't condemn me to the grave ahead of my time. I stopped going for my annual cholesterol test some years ago when a consumers' association came out with the news that they sent three batches of blood from the same person to three different laboratories for testing and the results that came back were shockingly dissimilar. Nowadays I try to "live dangerously" once or twice a month when I throw caution to the wind and eat my favourite "char koay teow" or "goo bak koay teow".
For the information of people who are interested the 5 types of food that have the highest cholesterol content are:
per 100 gm of food and cholesterol content in mg
1. quail's egg 3640
2. pig's brain 3100
3. ox brain 2300
4. egg yolk 2000
5. cuttlefish 1700