The soft drink company Coca-Cola is introducing a new orange juice, which promises to help lower cholesterol.

The Atlanta beverage empire’s juice brand Minute Maid will release Minute Maid Premium Heart Wise, said to contain additives called plant sterols, which are used to lower cholesterol in other foods like margarine.

“People with moderately high cholesterol will find this product will help them reduce their cholesterol significantly,” Coca-Cola spokesman Ray Crockett said.

According to the American Heart Association, a blood cholesterol level of 240 mg/dl or higher is considered a health risk. Approximately 42 million Americans suffer from high cholesterol levels, and Coca-Cola hopes some of this segment will be attracted to the juice.

Cholesterol, a fatty substance that is naturally in the body, can have positive and negative health effects. Too much cholesterol can cause plaque to build up in your arteries, and too much of this plaque can cause blockages in the flow of blood through arteries, increasing the risk of ailments such as heart disease and stroke.

Plant sterols are materials that resemble cholesterol and compete against it for uptake in the body. If cholesterol and plant sterols are present at the same time, plant sterols will be taken up by the body and block the uptake of cholesterol, thereby reducing cholesterol intake.

“This product will be very beneficial for those with metabolic problems,” said Charles Elson, University of Wisconsin professor emeritus of nutritional sciences.

There are several different reasons for high cholesterol. One reason is that a person’s body may be unable to control how much cholesterol the body makes, and when one consumes food with cholesterol, it becomes a problem. The desired amount of cholesterol a person should have in their body is less than 200mg/dl. This puts them at a low risk for heart disease, but the higher concentrations increase the danger.

Heart disease, the number one killer of Americans, kills more than 1,100,000 people in any given year. Nutritionists have agreed that a diet rich in unprocessed foods, such as fruits, vegetables and grains, can help lower a person’s cholesterol and therefore the risk of heart disease.

“This is a real innovation in that it provides a true functional benefit. It uses a beverage as a delivery system for an ingredient that will really help people,” said John Sicher, the trade publications editor for Coke-Cola.

It is suggested that a person should get two grams of plant sterol per day in order to lower cholesterol. To consume those amounts, an orange juice drinker would have to down two eight-ounce glasses of the new Minute Maid.

UW sophomore David Price is excited about the possibilities of this new product. “Sounds like a great invention, and I would love to try it. You never know what Coke is going to come up with next,” Price said.

Although there are other ways to lower cholesterol, some feel because many people already have a morning orange juice everyday that this is a very viable option.

“There are fantastic drugs that lower cholesterol,” Elson said. “But if this orange juice works, it could help a lot of people.”