Does egg consumption lead to an increased risk (even more so
than smoking) of cardiovascular disease?
According to this study it can:
The research and opinion on whether or not eggs are a health
promoting food is a moving target.
For years we were told to avoid whole eggs, just consume the whites and
products like Egg Beaters. Well
that advice hardly lowered cardiovascular events and in recent years the
demonization of whole eggs has eased a bit with the recommendation that eggs
can be part of a healthy diet. And
now this new study seems to contradict that! It can be very confusing and in the end it leaves us feeling
uncertain about just what we should be eating. Before we call off all egg consumption let’s take a deeper
look into this study. The sample
size is rather small and quite homogenous, the participants are from Western
Canada with a mean age of 61.5 and were patients attending vascular prevention
clinics. That last fact alone is
very important to note because the participants demonstrated by attending the
clinics that either they a) were already at high risk or b) were concerned
enough to seek preventative care.
The scientists did try to control for other variables such
as sex, blood lipid profile, smoking, and body weight index.
But they didn't look at other important lifestyle factors,
like exercise, stress, or other dietary factors.
Did they separate out processed foods and sugars from
cookies, cakes (these contain eggs), ice cream, pancakes, and processed
vegetable oils and margarines that may also have contributed to the
atherosclerosis?
How can they truly really say eggs were the cause of the
atherosclerosis? There simply is no way that a study like this can avoid the
so-called 'confounding variables.'
If you really wanted to do a study to see if eggs
contributed to heart disease, why not take a group of non-smoking, non-drinking
exercisers, who avoided starchy processed carbohydrates and processed vegetable
oils and feed them eggs from pasture raised hens from small family farms. Why didn’t that happen?
First of all accounting for all of these variables is nearly
impossible when dealing with human beings who have free will to do as they
please. The accumulation of this
data also would have taken a great deal of time and effort and likely would
have been expensive. Those reasons
are legitimate but they must be made clear because without these variables the
study and its conclusion are incomplete at best. It’s also important to note that even men and women of
science can have competing agendas.
Follow the money and you will often find the potential for conflicts of interest.
Two of the
study’s authors have vested interests in statin drugs, and the third helped
create the vegan “Portfolio Diet,” which only allows egg substitutes. [1]
I will also add that I would be interested in the quality of
the eggs that were consumed. Were
they from small farms that allow their hens to graze freely in pasture or were
the eggs the product of hens raised and reared on corn and soy in a farm
factory (more likely)? Does the
way hens are raised really affect the nutrition and quality of the egg?
Mother Earth News’ 2007 egg testing project clearly
demonstrated the nutritional differences between eggs from free-range pastured
hens and commercially farmed hens. This difference is not an occasional
fluke—it's the natural and inevitable result of the diet of the hen laying the
egg. Compared to official U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from
hens raised on pasture may contain:
1/3 less cholesterol
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta-carotene
These dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely
the result of the differences in diet between free-range pastured hens, vs.
commercially farmed hens.
Mother Earth News points out the flawed and downright
fraudulent definitions of “true free-range.” The United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) defines “free-range” as chickens that have “access to the
outside.” However, it does not define their diets, or whether or not the
“outside access” is to a cement courtyard or a field fit for foraging. Even buying USDA Organic eggs carries
no guarantee that hens have access to pasture, and more likely they may be feed
an organic vegetarian diet of corn and soy. Chickens are designed to eat green plants and insects
(yes chickens are omnivores!) so your best option for health promoting eggs is
to look for pastured eggs from small farmers. [2]
According to Dr. Jospeh Mercola eggs won’t harm your heart:
There is a major
misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect
your heart. While it's true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol,
this is not necessarily a health hazard. As I've discussed on many occasions,
your body actually requires cholesterol, and artificially driving your
cholesterol levels down is nearly always doing far more harm than good. Every
cell in your body needs cholesterol. It helps to produce cell membranes,
hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol
also helps in the formation of memories and is vital for your neurological
function. In other words, dietary cholesterol is your friend, not your enemy.
Besides, numerous
studies support the conclusion that eggs have virtually nothing to do with
raising your cholesterol anyway. For instance, research published in the
International Journal of Cardiology showed that, in healthy adults, eating eggs
daily did not produce a negative effect on endothelial function, an aggregate
measure of cardiac risk, nor an increase in cholesterol levels. [3]
The lead researcher in this study, Christine M. Greene
notes, her team's accumulating data indicate that most people's bodies handle
the cholesterol from eggs in a way that is least likely to harm the heart.
Cholesterol warnings have especially scared elderly people
away from eggs, says Greene. And that's a shame, she adds, because eggs are an
affordable and easy-to-eat source of high-quality protein for this population.
The new findings, Greene says, contribute to a growing body of data suggesting
that eggs shouldn't be construed "as a dietary evil."
This study's findings also dovetail with large studies by
other groups having no industrial financing. For instance, in 1999, Frank B. Hu
of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues reported no increased
risk of coronary heart disease or stroke in men or women who ate more than one
egg per day. The analysis compared diet and cardiovascular risk among nearly
38,000 participants of two long-running epidemiologic studies.
A Michigan State University analysis, reported a year later,
analyzed the diets and blood-cholesterol data for more than 27,000 people—a
representative cross-section of the U.S. population. It found that cholesterol
was lower in people who ate more than four eggs per week than among people who
eschewed eggs. However, the researchers cautioned, "This study should not
be used as a basis for recommending higher egg consumption for regulation of
serum cholesterol." [4]
Food For Thought:
My dad had two bypass surgeries in his mid-40’s and was
advised to avoid high cholesterol foods like butter, red meat and eggs. I remember we started using Egg Beaters
soon after that and they were awful, the very essence of processed food. I have never eaten rubber but this
stuff likely comes very close to it.
A University of Illinois study published in the journal Pediatrics in 1974 demonstrated just how
awful Egg Beaters could potentially be.
One group of lactating rats was fed exclusively on fresh eggs, while
another group ate Egg Beaters. The
rats who ate fresh eggs “thrived, grew normally, and enjoyed perfect health,
while those on Egg Beaters were stunted, had a variety of physical
abnormalities, and all died before reaching maturity.” [5] My dad has been
raising his own chickens for close to twenty years now and has been known to
have up to 4 whole eggs in one day and has never made a return trip to the
cardiovascular surgeon. I avoided
all dietary fat like the plague in my late teens and twenties because I truly
thought it was “healthy.”
But experience and education have convinced me otherwise and now I
consume plenty of whole eggs, grass fed butter and cheese. Even with this fat consumption and a
family history of high cholesterol my cholesterol is still quite low. I must caution that we all have unique
dietary needs but whole eggs from pasture-raised hens can be a potent health
promoter. That said high quality
food must be paired with good exercise habits, abstaining from smoking,
minimizing stress and greatly reducing your intake of processed foods and
sugar. Living your best life is
truly a combination of all of these things.
Phil Loomis
Youth Fitness/Nutrition Specialist
Reference:
[3]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/19/caged-vs-free-range-chicken-eggs.aspx
[5] Enig, Mary. (2006). Eat Fat Lose Fat. New
York, New York: Penguin Group
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