 Under normal circumstances, a western diet contains almost equal amounts of cholesterol and noncholesterol sterols (such as plant sterols sitosterol, campesterol, and brassicasterol).However, only about 55% of total dietary cholesterol is absorbed and retained while almost none of the noncholesterol sterols are retained since the small amount of dietary non-cholesterols that do enter the body are rapidly excreted by the liver into bile, almost unchanged.Sterolins are likely involved both in the selective transport of dietary cholesterol in and out of enterocytes and in selective sterol excretion by the liver into bile, as evidenced by the consequences when it is deficient or over expressed.