This study is seriously flawed for providing nutritional advice. It's just observational and not a controlled study . They didn't track what people ate during the study and even prior to starting they relied on the subject's memory of past consumption which is rather naive. Also, the methodology was so loose that they couldn't account for many variables, such as what the subjects ate with their eggs (eg. most people eat bacon with eggs, a variable not accounted for). There is absolutely no provable cause and effect relationship established. Why the press even bothers to publish such nonsense time and again is beyond meat ;-)
@Paul Well this is another nail as far as I'm concerned. I will avoid eggs until a definitive study comes out. The egg marketing board is just too powerful in disseminating fake news. So in the mean time there are enough studies about the cholesterol content and TMAO in egg yolks to put me off of eggs.
1
But no matter how heart-healthy the rest of a person’s diet, the more eggs consumed, the greater the risk for cardiovascular events, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure and premature death. BUT NOBODY EVER TELLS US HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH OR HOW MUCH IS JUST ENOUGH. SO ARE WE JUST SUPPOSED TO PLAY "OMELETTE ROULETTE" ?
1
If health is your main concern, you can simplify the matter. Cholesterol is vital for life, but there is 0 need to consume cholesterol. Turns out, your body makes all the cholesterol it needs. All the other nutrients they claim are so great in eggs, you can get from plant based sources without cholesterol or TMAO. In other words, best to avoid eggs.
2
Lots of vegans posting here.
The science is in on one important factor - eating eggs (or any food with cholesterol) does not raise cholesterol. How can that be? The human body, which is a marvel, will make less cholesterol.
High cholesterol is correlated with obesity and inactivity. So yes, if you are an obese inactive egg eater, you could get high cholesterol. But the eggs aren't causing it.
Enjoy your eggs.
3
@Erik "But no matter how heart-healthy the rest of a person’s diet, the more eggs consumed, the greater the risk for cardiovascular events, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure and premature death."
I would say this article clearly tells us how " the science is not in."
@Erik This is not true. Cholesterol levels increase for a substantial number of hours before they drop. So if you eat eggs every day then for a substantial proportion of the day you are raising the blood level. When you fast before the blood test this higher level will not show. I also read that people with existing high cholesterol will not show a rise after a diet of eggs but people with low cholesterol do show a rise. It is like there is a spill over limit. Some of these studies used people with already high LDL cholesterol.
1
"The new analysis looked at data from six large prospective studies involving almost 30,000 participants, with an average follow-up of more than 17 years."
This sentence alone indicates that the study is total nonsense, and there are likely other motivations involved.
Also, a 17% increase in CVD? What is the baseline? In other words, how many people/per 1,000 get CVD? Multiply that by 1.17%. The difference is statistically insignificant.
Eat eggs.
1
Is there any difference on cholesterol levels and other chemicals from organic chicken eggs with those from large production farms? This could be potential human health risks.
We don't know anything.
5
@James Carter Best comment here
I’d love to see a follow up study that looked at 1. Damaged versus healthy cholesterol, regardless of LDL/HDL 2. Mortality and morbidity, and 3. Which eggs, with what quality of fats? Factory farmed with degraded fat content, or pasture raised on regenerate agricultural farms?
2
I always wonder about the pasture vs. factory egg distinction. Do articles ever state which or should be just assume factory.
@A Feldman
2
What difference does this make in the significant chunk of us Americans whom are obese (no pun intended)? We are missing the point. Instead of getting lost in data, people should be getting up and out, living physically active and well-balanced lifestyles. Eat your extra egg if it makes you happy, but perhaps skip on that extra large fries.
7
On The conversation website they talked about this topic and it appeared that analysis by academics was that people with diabetes had more of a problem with a lot of eggs, than the general pollution
@Vince I obviously meant population, not pollution. The article is Eggs and health: unscrambling the message
2
Worth considering pollution at well though. https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/air-pollution-effects-cardiovascular.pdf
1
Let's just admit it. There is open warfare in nutritional medicine over eggs. I have a copy of the January, 2017 Harvard Health Letter stating within that eating an egg a day is not associated with an elevation of risk of any disease or condition.
The writer goes on to explain why this has turned around since her days in medical school. We now understand that most cholesterol is produced by the liver. The body knows what its current blood cholesterol level is, and if the person takes in a great deal of dietary cholesterol by eating, say, an egg, the liver will simply create less cholesterol until the blood level has returned to what it was before the egg was eaten.
So we have to wait for science to resolve this question, which could take several more decades, or we can just eat a moderate sensible diet and leave the scientists to rumble using up lots of tax money while they quarrel.
4
Now, how about publishing an article about high protein breakfast alternatives, please?
4
Eggs are a nutritional powerhouse, nicely summarized for the general population here, for example:
https://www.jillianmichaels.com/blog/food-and-nutrition/myth-egg-yolks-are-bad-you
You don't need to eat eggs all time! Eat and enjoy eggs just a few times a month, and when you do so, eat and enjoy the whole egg.
1
It would be interesting to tease out the relationship discussed on the population taking statins vs. those not on statins.
3
This study is "observational," observing a firm statistical relationship between a studied target (higher cholesterol) and eggs (chicken eggs, we are left to guess at) in a diet. A statistical relationship, not cause and effect, were found. For that we await further research, till then we'll have to wait and see, the current judgement is as the title suggests, "Maybe."
Not so, as some commentators have hinted, with climate change. There, we know the causal links, the "why
and "how," of the link between rising CO2 emissions and rising global temperatures.
Statistical relationships produce "maybe's". Understanding the "why's and how's" produce scientific consensus.
7
The so called “17 years “ study is a huge red flag ... there is no way they can isolate egg to be the only cause that results the high LDL???
5
@ABenyi
That's not a valid argument.
If you want to reject a scientific studies' results, you have to start by READING it. And if you believe that there's a methodological error, you have to be able to show where it is more precisely, and why it would be an error.
That as a non-scientist you can't believe that a scientific method exists for this kind of research doesn't say anything about the research, it merely says something about your own level of scientific knowledge and the boundaries of your own, subjective imagination, you see?
Now here's what you would have discovered if you would have read the study.
First of all, it's not a "so-called" 17 years study, it IS a 17 years study, as patients have indeed been followed for 17 years (on average, which means some a bit longer, some a bit less - for instance because they died after 15 years).
Secondly, nobody is claiming here that eggs ALONE cause high cholesterol (and in general; the article doesn't mention LDL versus HDL, as you seem to have read?).
Third, studies like this don't literally "isolate" eggs, they do the opposite: they study people whose OTHER risk factors (smoking, not exercising, drinking, high stress, weak social bonds, lot of red meat, not a lot of fruits and vegetables, etc.) are EQUAL. So the ONLY difference between those people is the amount of eggs they eat a day, you see?
That means that IF those who develop CVC disease are also the ones who ate most eggs, you have a statistical correlation.
6
@Ana Luisa
Self-reported food surveys, plus weak and confounded risk factors. It's garbage in, garbage out, filtered through an anti-meat and anti-fat bias, like almost all nutritional epidemiology.
1
As a clinician, I always chuckle when people on these threads, commonly without a medical background, comment on their experience with a given medical topic, in this case, eggs.
If you describe your experience in positive ways, congratulations!! Statistically however, you are an “n of 1” (look it up) and clearly people in these scenarios place way too much stock in their own outcomes.
This is the natural evolution of the Google Doctor mentality that is corrosive to good medical care.
6
@JFK
With all respect, I'd disagree.
First of all, what many comments are doing here is clearly based on a lack of knowledge about how science works. This (quite massive) lack of science education shows how bad US education actually is. It also shows how difficult it is today to report on scientific discoveries, which explains how easily ordinary citizens become victims of fake news - and today we saw to what kind of political disasters this vulnerability can lead, for us as a society.
Second, before the "Google Doctor mentality", doctors used to be "obeyed" to, as they had lots of "authority" in the eyes of ordinary citizens. The problem was - and is - that although medicine is based on certain scientific data and procedures, exercising it as a daily job, in contact with patients, is often much more of an "art" (in the noble sense of the world - the doctor being an "artisan") than a science. Result? Many "authoritarian" doctors' diagnoses were/are wrong. THAT's how people learned to cultivate some mistrust and became more critical of doctors, you see?
Finally, I saw too many doctors "chuckling" at the ignorance of patients to not feel sad, when confronted with one more such a doctor. Being a doctor doesn't turn you into a superior human being, compared to ordinary citizens without science education. Maybe instead of chuckling, compassion and calmly explaining in an understandable way might be more compatible with the Hypocratic oath...?
7
With all due respect I’m not sure a doctor is that great at these nutrition decisions either. These “studies” inundate is with conflicting data. The egg once was good then bad then good then bad again. Please. Also the issue with cholesterol is not so simple. They are beginning to discover hundreds of types. And each time they are able to isolate one they base a blood test and a health announcement around it. There are humans all across the globe who live on very different diets than the ones we feel are the “best”. One food is not the enemy nor the answer. We should know that by now.
8
My motto (stolen from a bumper sticker, sorry...) is 'Eat well, exercise, die anyway'. Everything, including eggs, in moderation. Don't panic. And carry a towel!
5
So, the science is not settled on anything, except on “climate change,” somehow.
2
@JQGALT
Uh ... in the field of epidemiology, studie by definition are about percentages of risk increases.
But medicine isn't just epidemiology, remember?
When a blood test shows that you have pneumonia, for instance, is it certain that you have a deadly disease and urgently need antibiotics.
So being "settled science" or not has to with very specific scientific questions, and on certain question (many of them, actually) we HAVE "settled science", on other not yet at all.
When it comes to climate change for instance, the statements "the global climate is rapidly warming" and "that warming is caused by human carbon production" are settled science (and for decades already). That oceans are acidifying is soo too. That there is a threat to human food chains and habitats too. That that threat will increase, too.
How fast will it increase and what exactly will it entail within a century: here many questions are answered, and many other still not settled.
And by the way, without TONS of "settled science" we would never have a way to communicate across oceans, send men into space, have open heart operations, nor light bulbs ... just to give a few examples ... ;-)
2
All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you...
Wait 6 months and you’ll stumble across another study that refutes the findings of the previous three.
1
I eat several eggs per week and I've never had high cholesterol. It is always within normal limits. So I'll go by my own scientific study of myself!
1
@Peter Castellano
ONE case is one case. A scientific study analyzes thousands of cases, all while isolating one factor (= keeping all others constant).
What this particular scientific study shows is that if you eat ONE egg a day, it doesn't increase your cholesterol, as that means 185 milligrams a day, whereas you need 300 milligrams to find a significant risk increase.
So eating several eggs per week means less than 8, I presume?
In that case you're a PERFECT example of the results of this study, you see?
2
@Ana Luisa
No actual measurement or testing of cholesterol consumption took place. It was all based on self-reported food surveys.
17 percent increased in risk is meaningless unless you state the actual risk. If their is one chance in 100 million and you increase it by 17% it is meaningless.
It’s all there in the article in JAMA. It’s even there in the freely available abstract with the absolute risk difference (ARD). I’d recommend reading the actual source document if you are interested in this topic.
5
@Marlowe
Your actual risk depends on your other risk factors.
If you smoke, don't exercice, drink, eat lots of red meat etc., you basic risk will be quite high already. So then eating two eggs a day might increase your that risk significantly.
3
The study itself provides data that contradicts the headline -- page 29 of the appendix to the study, which is available online, shows that when adjusted for red meat consumption, there was no correlation between cardiovascular risk and egg consumption. (in effect there was a slightly lower -- by 1% -- risk between increased egg consumption and cardiovascular disease).
2
So, actually, as it states clearly in the Results and in the title of the figure to which you are referring, that is showing results of a secondary analysis focused just on a subset of outcomes, coronary heart disease, not on the primary outcome, total cardiovascular disease. This is an important distinction as subtypes of cardiovascular disease were not part of the primary hypothesis being addressed. These types of data provide perspective on the main outcome. And while what you assert is correct for coronary heart disease, it does not appear to be correct for stroke, and is clearly not correct for overall cardiovascular disease.
3
I eat 2 home grown, free-range organic eggs per day fried in 2 T of coconut oil...love it! and I have NO problems with my heart, my cholesterol or blood pressure. Do you know why? First, I drink plenty of water...one ounce per one pound of body weight. Then I eat NO sugar and grains, i.e., rice, pasta, bread, quinoa, oatmeal. I only eat one fruit per week, no honey or maple syrup. Fruit turns into fructose which turns into fat in the liver, i.e., non-alcoholic fatty liver syndrome. We're suppose to only eat fruit 3 months out of the year and that translates to once a week, more or less. Sugar and grains are the culprits for heart problems, not fat. And drinking at least 4 quarts of water per day with lots of salt intake hydrates the cells. Most doctors treat symptoms of dehydration...headaches, lethargy, dry skin, thick blood, etc. Look up symptoms of dehydration.... Don't listen to doctors when it comes to nutrition. I'm 75, never see a doctor (don't have one) and run a ranch, raising cattle, milking goats, pigs, chickens, horses, and more. Start with water and air, then go to REAL food that no one has cooked for you. Don't eat out! Don't buy prepared foods! Good luck
13
You are one person.
Your simplistic rationale does not in any way explain the data discussed at the ‘population level’, which is what the article addresses, not one person outliers.
5
@Denise Anderson You said, "We're suppose to only eat fruit 3 months out of the year and that translates to once a week, more or less." Where did you hear a thing like that?
5
Eggs are not the only source of cholesterol. Does it make a difference how much meat and dairy are consumed?
1
Yes the data suggest so. But eggs are the largest source of cholesterol in the American diet, on average.
1
@Barbara
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood serum cholesterol. This has been known for decades, despite all the cholesterol hysteria.
6
@KathL
As your statement here really amazed me, I just did some fact-checking, and it appears to be false indeed. In the US, it's meat, not eggs, who are responsible for most cholesterol intake:
"Among the overall population, meat, eggs, grain products, and milk contributed to 96% of the total dietary cholesterol consumption (Table 2). Meat contributed 42% to the total cholesterol intake (12% for poultry, 12% for mixed dishes, 8% for red meat, 5% for processed meat, and 5% for seafood) (Table S3), with 25% from eggs, 17% from grain products (5% for breads, 0% for cooked grains/cereals and RTE cereals, and 12% for other grain products), and 11% from milk and milk products."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024549/
3
So is it meaningful with respect to raising LDL? Lowering HDL? Raising triglycerides? And if say your total cholesterol is fine then no harm no foul? A little clarity would be nice.
3
@Dirk Good question!
1
@Dirk
As I was wondering too, I did some googling ... .
What I found is that eggs increase both bad and good cholesterol, but the bad ones (LDL) more than the good ones (HDL), so that overall, they increase bad cholesterol.
2
if they don't control for bmi this "observational" study is worse than bogus. "look, we saw an interesting thing" isn't science.
Adjusted for BMI, diabetes, smoking status, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, medication use, age, sex, race, and many other dietary factors. This does not create randomization, as has been pointed out, but has the effect of holding other factors constant in effect, to isolate and understand the associations of interest. About as good a look as you can get without a randomized study, but who will do/pay for a randomized study? Not in our lifetimes.
4
@KathL
Nothing was "held constant". Statistical adjustments were made to a mess of confounded data, which came from self-reported food surveys in the first place. Risk factors were weak, contradictory, and almost certainly not causal, as they are in all nutritional epidemiology.
Already existing randomized trials already contradict these results.
1
@The Pooch
Not all nutritional epi studies are the same, actually. I'd be interested in reading those trials. Links?
2
Whatever happened to the thesis that your body makes 85% and what you eat doesn’t matter. Does that mean next week we will be told not to eat shrimp. And the following week that we should go back to margarine.
5
Okay. The full study is behind a paywall.
But the last line of the abstract says that the findings of increased risk from egg consumption were no longer significant when adjusted for overall cholesterol consumption.
Only about 25% of the cholesterol in the US diet comes from eggs (see the link below).
So you'd have to adjust for the other sources of cholesterol in the US diet -- including things like trans fats and the known negative health effects of high temperatures and frying on fats and proteins -- before drawing any conclusions. Doesn't look like there was any attempt to do that.
https://epi.grants.cancer.gov/diet/foodsources/cholesterol/table1.html
4
@Katherine
I saw that too (as another comment below used this line to reject the - explicitly stated - overall conclusions of the study, as summarized in this article too).
Those sentences are TECHNICAL language, so we can't just read them and then imagine that we've understood them.
The entire sentence is:
"The associations between egg consumption and incident CVD (adjusted HR, 0.99 [95% CI, 0.93-1.05]; adjusted ARD, −0.47% [95% CI, −1.83% to 0.88%]) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.03 [95% CI, 0.97-1.09]; adjusted ARD, 0.71% [95% CI, −0.85% to 2.28%]) were no longer significant after adjusting for dietary cholesterol consumption."
What does "adjusting for dietary cholesterol consumption" mean here? We don't know.
Your interpretation, however, is directly contradicted by the conclusions themselves.
2
SO you are saying that while YOU do not know how to interpret that particular conclusion because of the TECHNICAL language [ in the excerpt you added], you nonetheless can tell Katherine that she is wrong to ask about how it relates to their conclusion?
I think she thoughtfully brought up a result which merits explanation by the Times writer ( especially since there's a paywall for the full text).
2
@Ana Luisa The original commenter is correct. If the conclusions of the paper are in fact valid, then the effect of eating eggs is only due to the cholesterol, and not to any other intrinsic problem with eggs. This means that you can eat as many eggs as you want, so long as you reduce other sources of dietary cholesterol.
A study like this one is not reliable - based on epidemiology and not actual research. Utter nonsense. Humans and other mammals have been eating eggs for hundreds and thousands of years. More nonsense from the food industry funded frauds.
1
@Mark Burgh
And why do you reject a scientific field such as epidemiology, which is part of medical research for decades already?
You seem to ignore that a lot of what we know, in medicine, IS based on epidemiological research?
As to your idea that as humans ate eggs for hundreds of thousands of years: that's true, of course, but how does that somehow refute the discovery that with each additional half egg eaten, we increase our risk of cardiovascular disease with 6% ... ?
Finally, as your argument seems to rather be that no matter what that humans are doing for thousands of years cannot possibly have a negative impact on health and mortality rate: you seem to ignore that for most of the history of humankind, life expectancy was about 40 years? Why would we want to adopt behavior that lowers our life expectancy rate, just because cave men might have adopted that behavior too ... ? That's a bit of a weird argument, no?
6
@Ana Luisa: "If I made a career publishing observational nutritional epidemiology studies, I would plant trees. Cause that was one giant waste of paper."
-Vinay Prasad, MD & MPH
2
@Ana Luisa
Epidemiology of infectious disease is a very important area of research. Same for factors like smoking, seat belt use, vaccines.
_Nutritional_ epidemiology has a specific and terrible track record. Self-reported food surveys, weak and contradictory results, and tiny correlations seized upon and proclaimed as causation, even after these claims are refuted in controlled trials. It has resulted in decades of wretched and useless dietary advice.
3
A recent, peer-reviewed study: "The risk associations found in the observational studies are more likely to be attributed to a dietary pattern often accompanying high egg intake and/or the cluster of other risk factors in people with high egg consumption. Dietary patterns, physical activity and genetics affect the predisposition of CVD and T2D more than a single food item as eggs. In conclusion, up to seven eggs per week can safely be consumed, but in patients with established CVD or T2D only with special emphasis on a healthy lifestyle." https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2017153
4
The medical consensus in the UK seems to be that cholesterol is harmless for persons who haven't had heart incidents, but a health risk for those who have. This study did not control for that factor. It also did not control for associated diet and other risk factors. Is high consumption of eggs associated with poverty, little exercise, diabetes, obesity or other factors?
2
The study did adjust for serum cholesterol levels
Yet another article about this that states the risk of heart disease goes up 11% (I'm assuming not 11 percentage points) without saying what the starting point was. What was the original risk? How can we know what it went up to? 11% of what?
1
@Levi
The original risk depends on many other, well-known risk factors (such smoking, alcohol, no exercise, etc.).
So it's different from person to person.
What studies that analyze risk factors do, is taking samples of people who all have the exact same risks (eg who don't smoke nor drink, exercise about the same amount of time a week etc.), which allows them to "isolate" that one single factor that they want to study (in this case: the number of eggs you ate a day).
So let's say that in your case you have some risk factors, and that they are moderately present, but not all of them. Let's suppose that in that case your risk factor, independently from eggs, is at about 20%.
In that case, if you eat two eggs a day, you increase your risk by 17%. To make calculating easy, let's suppose that they found that it was 20%.
That means that now, you're already existing 20% risk, INCREASES by 20%. 20% of 20% is 4%.
So now, in your specific case, by eating two eggs a day, your risk of cardiovascular disease become 24% instead of 20%.
If however your risk (= the other risk factors) is already at 60%, then eating two eggs a day (and taking the assumption of a 20% increase rather than 17%, just to make calculating rapidly easier) means you jump to a 15% increase, so now, with two eggs a day on top of all the rest (no exercising at all, smoking a lot etc.), your risk becomes 75%, you see?
Did I miss something here? I don't recall anyone mentioning exactly what the maximum "safe" egg consumption would be....how can I know if I'm half an egg too many if I don't know what is considered an ok amount. I doubt most people consume eggs on a daily basis, so the danger of going "half an egg per day" over seems a bit vague.
2
Yes, yes, we should all be eating boiled roots and bran. You won’t actually live longer, it just seems like it.
12
@Cecelia
lol! reminds me of the Roz Chast cartoon of a grave stone marked "I ate all that Kale for nothing!"
6
I am surprised at how frustrated people are when new studies refute old ones which refute even older ones. That’s how scientific research works and how information grows. I tell my patients that just because I recommend something a year ago doesn’t mean I may not recommend it a year from now depending on what new scientific data has emerged and how robust the scientific information is. Knowledge changes over time as new studies are done and data emerges....all with the hope that we are getting closer and closer to the the answers of an ongoing debate.
Secondly, when I hear such vehement opposition to cutting back on certain foods it’s like an alcoholic getting angry at being told to stop drinking. In other words addiction to food is a major problem. That’s what the food industry including the egg, dairy, sugar and meat industry is wanting to achieve.
Studies show plant based eating is the most likely to be protective of human health and the planet. Good for you and good for the world we will leave our children and children’s children.
10
@JPTMD
Any "plant-based" diet that claims to be protective against anything always involves the removal of sugar, refined carbs, and other highly processed foods. Yet somehow the benefits are attributed to the "plant-based" part, while ignoring the sugary elephant in the middle of the room.
Meat, eggs, and full-fat dairy are both nutritious and satiating to the appetite. If something is highly satiating, then consumption is self-limiting. The exact opposite of addiction.
6
Likewise a keto or paleo diet eliminates processed food and the benefit is always attributed to the high protein foods instead of the empty calories. But to say that meat and full fat dairy is nutritious is to ignore their connection with higher rates of cancer. There is a reason why colorectal cancer is happening in 40 year olds these days and our intake of meat has everything to do with it.
3
@JPTMD
High protein foods are nutritious and satiating. One is much less likely to binge on sugary processed foods when the appetite is satisfied.
Intake of red meat has gone down over the past few decades. Intake of sugars, refined carbs, and refined seed oils has gone up. Are you sure it's the meat?
3
I am wondering what amount of egg consumption is okay. I have a 14 year old son, very tall, very fit. He is a runner and he often makes himself scrambled eggs and avocado toast. Is that a bad breakfast, eaten 3 or 4 times per week? (Other breakfast option is usually greek yogurt, with fresh fruit and a large handful of almonds.) He avoids eating much processed sugar. No soda, very few sweets.
I had thought he was eating fairly healthy food -- I cook typically Mediterranean foods for dinner, with smallish protein servings and lots of vegetables. Are two eggs for breakfast a problem for a healthy teen?
4
The essential claim is that eggs but not other foods contribute to CVD. This claim is based on ONE dietary recall. So lets propose another explanation for the observed data. (H0) Recall itself is so flawed that the results are essentially random, except for eggs (which are easy to count). In this model many other foods could contribute to CVD, could even have larger effects on CVD than eggs, but this information is lost in a sea of inaccurate data.
The bottom line is and should be -- garbage in = garbage out.
4
@Craig Warden - The description of the study presented in the article can't be correct. It states "The study has limitations. The data depended on self-reports about what people ate, which are not always reliable, and the analyzed studies used varying methods for collecting the diet information. The researchers also relied on a single measurement of egg and dietary cholesterol consumption, even though diets can change over time." And also states "They were also able to record the exact amounts of cholesterol in each person’s diet and to sort out the effects of the cholesterol in eggs from all the other foods that contain cholesterol." These are mutually exclusive. They also admit that reactions to dietary cholesterol are highly variable, and that, as with statins, the effects are different for those who've already had a heart attack and those who haven't. No causation is suggested, just correlation. I won't bet my life on that.
1
I had a very high cholesterol level, now some time ago, and became very aware of what contributed to it. I have been on medication since and the levels are pretty much where they should be. But it was my understanding that the problem was less with consuming cholesterol than it was with consuming fat. This article/study doesn't seem to address that, though it may have controlled for it. I wonder where that relationship stands.
I'll just note that I have reduced carbohydrates drastically as that affects blood sugar, and since I have a family history of diabetes I'd like to keep that under control. As a result I am consuming more animal protein, notwithstanding studies such as this. (And I'm still not ready to become a vegetarian.) But I spend most of the day hungry. :-)
3
With all due respect to those commenting here with a heavy dose of snarky indignation, (though I don't entirely blame them for their mistrust), I appreciate and agree that egg consumption, specifically the animal cholesterol containing yolk, in higher amounts, can contribute negatively to increased levels of circulating plasma cholesterols of which are the type more likely to attach to artery and vein vessel walls, creating higher likelihood of CVD.
The culprit that is activated by the specific yolk cholesterols is called TMAO or triethylamine-N-oxide, which is a natural gut bacteria metabolite. Scientists have also created a new plasma blood test specifically for measuring TMAO levels. The higher the number, the higher the risk for accumulating artery plaques.
I will still eat eggs, but I've always cooked or eaten them with either no yolk or half yolk.
Thank you NYT's.
I've included the link to the Cleveland Clinic article below.
http://www.clevelandheartlab.com/blog/horizons-tmao-testing-a-new-way-to-assess-heart-attack-and-stroke-risk/
3
@RLC
Funny thing is, lots of supposedly healthy vegetables and fish also raise TMAO levels. But somehow the focus always remains on "evil" eggs and meat.
At best, TMAO is a marker, and not a causality.
2
I appreciate the well-carried out study, but we need to consider much more than just 1 food in regards to CVD risk. The benefits of eating 1 whole egg daily, as part of a balanced meal or snack and as part of a generally minimally processed diet may very well outweigh the potential risks of the single egg's cholesterol level. Adding more minimally processed plant based foods to a diet that happens to include 1 egg per day may counter any potential risk. The protein and fat content in an egg is a very satisfying addition to a balanced meal or snack... this can also help with portion control, which further must indirectly benefit heart health
9
I want to thank KathL, ChildofSol, AnaLuisa and others here who valiantly defend the scientific method against the anecdotes and ideologies, fears of science, and FactsEverybodyKnows that keep pouring in on this string.
The researchers stated their case in a carefully limited way, qualified by many factors in the study and the need for further research -- while their attackers cherry-pick sentences from it, celebrate their 100-year-old grandparents, make unsubstantiated claims for this diet or that, and THEN complain about "junk science."
It's no wonder that America abounds in climate change denial, vaccination fear, and goofy conspiracy theories.
10
@Jake
Skepticism of poorly conducted science (nutritional science based on self-reported surveys) is not conspiracy theory. Especially when the "science" in question has a decades-long track record of producing absolutely terrible advice, and is frequently contradicted by controlled trials.
3
This report is just the tip of the ice berg in how nutrition affects personalized medicine. Now researchers need to tease out what life style and health factors make eggs nutritious for some and deadly to others or nutritious to me on some days and not others. Perhaps an individuals fatty liver disease, diabetes, dietary sugar, liver metabolism, growth rate (my teenagers can eat anything), and activity intensity all play a role.
5
Your article is very good, thank for your share :)
On the one hand, we have eggs -- one of the most nutritious, nutrient-dense, and nourishing foods.
On the other hand, we have self-reported food surveys, vegan ideology, and 40 years of failed low fat, low cholesterol nutrition dogma.
11
I note that during those 40 years, heart disease death rates have declined by about 70% in the US. Surely not all due to diet since there have been other advances in health care and prevention, but taken as a whole, this is not exactly a failure. In fact it is one of the, if not the, most successful examples of public health improvement for a chronic non communicable disease in human history. Eye on the ball folks.
1
@KathL Heart disease rate declined due to the increased rate and success of procedures, like stents and bypasses. Not because of decrease in instances of CVD. We didn't get healthier we learned to maintain disease better.
2
@KathL
On heart disease, smoking declined over those decades, and emergency treatment of heart disease got better.
The people telling us "eggs, meat, and cholesterol will kill you" are the same people who told us to base our diets on bread, pasta, and, cereal, and to top it off with "heart healthy margarine." The AHA _today_ is still pushing that margarine nonsense.
Over the course of the past 40 years, we have had stunning, unprecedented epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
1
This reminds me of a despairing letter a man sent into Life magazine after they had published a study of the lack of nutritional value in boxed cereals one week and a study of the danger of colestorhol from egges the next. After he informed his wife of this, she served him shredded life magazine in orange juice for breakfast the next morning. As usual moderation is the key. Eggs one morning with whole grain toast, whole grain hot cereal with fruit, banana, no fat greek yougurt and whole grain english muffin, bran flakes with skim milk. I probably eat eggs once or twice a week but vary them with many other breakfasts. My cholesterol is normal and has been for many years.
5
Many years ago, I kept hearing news reports on the radio about this causing cancer in Lab rats, and that causing cancer in Lab rats. I determined that the main important ingredient in all these reports was that it was very bad luck to be a lab rat. I heard at that time that coffee was very bad for you. Now, we discover the coffee is the greatest source of antioxidants in our diet. I will wait for another analysis of another set of studies to tell me that stressing about food will kill me before the eggs do.
8
As a physician dual board certified in internal medicine and integrative medicine, with a degree in nutrition, I can say that the very premise of the study comes to question in that the source of the eggs was not taken into consideration. As with grass fed versus conventional meat, the fatty acid and nurturing composition of an egg produced in a conventional commercial setting versus pasture raised is completely different; one being pro inflammatory and the other anti inflammatory. To broadly blame the egg without taking these critical factors into account is simplistic at best.
26
@Pelica. Amen. And thus I provide my son whole ORGANIC milk, but if I can't get organic I buy him skim milk.
@Pelica Yes thank you! I now only consume pasture raised eggs. They are delicious! I also drink mostly grass fed raw milk. Ultra-Pasteurization of most milk products, while increasing shelf life, leaves little in nutrition if at all. At least try to get organic milk will "regular" pasteurization. The raw milk is great for the gut microbiome as well.
1
@Donia Read up more on the skim milk. I would avoid it myself. Stick to full fat milk, preferably organic and NOT ultra-pasteurized.
As I am sure someone may have already pointed out, it is important to distinguish “relative risk” vs “absolute risk”. Relative risk is a percentage, absolute is the size of your individual risk.
If you visit a risk calculator like this one from the American College of Cardiology: tools.acc.org/ASCVD-Risk-Estimator-plus/#!/calculate/estimate -- you may calculate your current 10 year risk. For me, it was 5.2%.
Adding in a relative risk, as this study suggests at 17% for a additional 300 mg of cholesterol, increases my absolute risk to 6.08%. Using relative risk without taking into account absolute risk is misleading.
12
Most of the comments are in line with most of the comments in other nutrition and health articles, and can be boiled down to some variation of: "This study, and scientific research in general, is bogus." A result to be expected in some quarters, but somewhat surprising in the New York Times. When it comes to science, we would do well to learn the difference between skepticism and doubt. The study in question is not yet accessible to the general public; to claim that the researchers' conclusions are wrong without knowing how the conclusions were arrived at is to already have one's mind made up. Doubting without evidence is no more valid than believing without evidence.
3
@childofsol
What do you think is reliable about a self-reported food survey? Have you ever taken one? Do you remember how many portions of each food you ate per week over the past six months?
What exactly do you think is harmful about eating eggs?
Why do you always defend the long-discredited low fat, low cholesterol diet?
2
@The Pooch
What does your comment have to do with anything I've written?
1
@childofsol
What exactly in eggs is harmful? Name an ingredient, and propose a mechanism for how it causes disease.
But sure, keep relying on those self-reported food surveys while ignoring biochemistry, evolution, and controlled trials.
1
This article is skewed. It states in the abstract "This analysis included 29 615 participants (mean [SD] age, 51.6 [13.5] years at baseline) of whom 13 299 (44.9%) were men and 9204 (31.1%) were black."
According to this recent study in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Vol. 26, Issue 2, February 2015,
african americans have a higher risk of cvd. See:
"African Americans represent a minority population in the United States (44 million individuals or 14% of the population) that experiences an inordinately high rate of cardiovascular disease compared with the majority non-Hispanic white population (hereafter termed “whites”)".
New Insights on the Risk for Cardiovascular Disease in African Americans: The Role of Added Sugars, https://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/26/2/247.
Thus the authors included a high risk group at twice the level of the existing population.
3
But the article dissects all of the relevant subgroups and shows consistent associations in every single group, except for those with LDL cholesterol <70 not due to treatment.
4
Someone needs to dissect this study because it's not what it seems, and it's irresponsible for the NYT or JAMA to act as if it is. In general, the people followed were not healthy to begin with. Healthy non-smokers should probably ignore the report's conclusions. The data combine results from 6 different studies with mean ages from 26 to 73, which is too broad to be meaningful. But based on the mean Body Mass Index, the subjects in all the studies were overweight, with the exception of the 26 year old group which was barely within a healthy range with BMI 24.6. For the three groups with middle aged subjects (ages 49 -54), a huge percent (between 17% and 40%) were taking drugs for hypertension. In the single largest study (ARIC, which included the majority of all subjects followed, mean age 54), 31% suffered hypertension, 26% were current smokers and 33% were former smokers. No surprise, this particularly unhealthy group suffered twice the rate of death and cardiac disease of the similarly aged FOS group (81% never-smokers). The two groups overall that showed the best results on death and disease actually consumed the MOST cholesterol and eggs per day. This was the 26 year old group, which makes sense, but also, peculiarly, a group of overweight African Americans (BMI 31.9), median age 49, with a high level (40%) use of anti-hypertension drugs but a low level of current smoking (12%) and former smoking (16%). Their diseases rates were 1/3 the level of the ARIC group.
4
Unfortunately you are incorrect. The included cohorts are quite representative of the US, which has a 35% prevalence of obesity (BMI >=30) overall and even higher in African Americans, 46% prevalence of hypertension in the US overall and higher in African Americans, and so on. Sad but true.
3
@KathL Clearly many Americans are obese with unhealthy habits. But I said if you are a healthy non-smoker, then it's hard to see how this study would apply. In the ARIC study that constitutes the majority of subjects in the overall study, 59% were current or former smokers compared to about 40% in the general adult population today. So the ARIC group is clearly not a representative sample of Americans.
1
I guess they forgot to tell this guy who ate 25 eggs/day with no issues. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199103283241306 Cholesterol is not the problem folks. Inflammation in the arteries caused by carbs/sugar and toxins is the problem. Cholesterol acts as a band-aid trying to fix the lesion/damage in the arteries caused by sugar/processed carbs. The build-up of cholesterol trying to heal the lesion causes the issue. Fix the CAUSE of the inflammation/lesions, NOT the cholesterol. The cause being processed carbs/sugar, flour, and industrial seed oils (canola, soybean, corn, safflower, etc.)
6
The recent study indicated that people consumed an average of 1.5 eggs per day....or 10.5 per week! I believe that is rather excessive egg consumption for our average population. I doubt that a couple of eggs a couple of times per week is going to adversely affect you. You have to have some moderation in anything you eat. 10 - 11 eggs per week is ridiculous.
1
@Mike O' Why do you say that 10-11 eggs a week is ridiculous? I eat 2-3 eggs every day (I am a very slim, healthy woman). They are a cheap, fast and tasty source of protein. And I had understood them to be healthy. I just wonder why you feel that it's so obvious that 10 is a lot. A lot of people eat eggs every day for breakfast.
9
The only statistical certainty to be found here is that 100% of the study participants, scientists and commentors will die.
8
So true! But it does matter how long you live with health
3
So true, but it does matter how long one lives with health, so avoiding a heart attack or stroke, which is by far our #1 potential health risk, is important.
5
After a lifetime of conflicting information on what to eat/not eat; and reading the article, scanning the comments, I will offer my simple guidance in eating and drinking:
Think about what you put in your mouth. Make a judgment based on the preponderance of evidence, combined with living a practical life. Moderation in all things. Choose a diet you can live with, at home, work, and when travelling.
Get your blood tested to see how you are holding up, and recognize that worry is bad for your health too.
We are mostly vegetarians who eat wild fish two or three times a week. We eat homemade egg “McMuffins” three or four times a week, made with about 1/3rd peppers, mushrooms, and onions.
This diet literally eliminated type 2 diabetes for a family member.
You need to decide the best place to get your protein and iron with a diet you can stick to.
8
@SP If you eat fish two or three times a week, you are not vegetarians. You are pescetarians. Just saying....
1
@Charles M
Yes, agree That is why I said “mostly vegetarian”! Many people don’t know what pescatarian is, and we try to limit the anoint of fish.
We found that restaurants are sadly lacking in edible and/or varied vegetarian choices, but always have fish choices.
Likewise, being invited for dinner, we just say “we loved to but we don’t eat meat”
4
Self reporting!? Enough said. And what of statins? Does taking them actually do anything? It lowers total count and LDL but it would seem that consumption is what matters. I’m fed up with these studies.
3
One of the best foods to keep your brain healthy as you age is eggs. You could survive on avocados and eggs as foods.
For those of you who have been told your cholesterol is too high, ask your doctor for a fluffy LDL test. Most doctors don’t even know what this test is. If you are eating keto or paleo and your doctor is telling you you are going to be a sorry mess with your cholesterol
And let me tell you doctors don’t even know about these diets, they are mighty surprised when you lose weight and your cholesterol and triglycerides get better from eating Fat! Eggs and bacon! I’m eating my choline and staying a sharp buster into old age! Look up choline and forget this article!
4
So first we're told not to eat eggs because they're high in cholesterol, then that it's oK because serum cholesterol is different, some said eggs actually protect against heart disease, now that some observational study warns we're at greater risk of heart disease if we DO eat eggs.
Is it any wonder people don't listen to nutrition 'experts' any more?
Bring on the cheese omelet!
4
I believe they overlooked the impact of TMAO generation from choline found in egg yolk and a microbiota that favors TMAO production ( usually a microbiota from a low plant / low fiber diet) . Cleveland Clinic has had several studies
Dating back to 2013. Carnatine in red meat also raises TMAO.
2
Everything in moderation is our family mantra. Except drugs and tobacco - zero tolerance.
But genetics is probably a major issue and was not addressed in the study.
4
Eating a plant-based diet (vegan) allows me to not worry about any of this! Are there studies regarding the effects of spinach, tofu, and mushrooms on my health?
1
@June K Volk Re tofu...aren't there studies about the effects of too much soy in the diet (e.g. its impact on estrogen levels)? I like tofu myself, but I am afraid to eat a lot of soy products.
1
@June K Volk
Eating a whole foods omnivorous diet allows me to not worry about any of this.
2
I haven't had a chance to read the journal article yet, but keep in mind that when they use numbers like an 18% increase risk of all cause mortality, a number that high almost certainly represents a relative risk; it's like saying that someone who makes 5 out of 100 shots in basketball is 25% better than someone who makes 4 out of 100 shots. Relative to each other, it's a huge difference. In absolute terms, the first shooter is only 1% better.
I suspect the absolute difference on mortality of egg consumption may be 0.5-3% but we'll have to see the actual results to make that determination.
Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of eggs. The yolks have almost all the nutrients that are marketed in supplements. However I also am very familiar with medical research and am very cognizant of the tricks (many drug makers use) of using relative risk instead of absolute risk to make their results look more impressive.
15
@V. Sharma, MD
Exactly. Precisely!Absolutely.
Wondering if Mr. Bakalar has access to the full journal article?
I only had access to the abstract not the underlying 'data'; would be interested to know if it is another one of those relying on participants' recall of what they ate years ago; or, if the participants are already overweight and ingest the standard American high carb/high fat diet?
I too am a fan of eggs ... interested in seeing how the egg people re-market The Egg.
2
@V. Sharma, MD
Yes well said.
Also, there is a huge difference between eggs from caged vs non caged hens. Especially the omega 6/3 ratio.
4
is it any wonder people get confused about dietary information? When I was much younger it was concluded that eggs were bad bad bad. Then it was said well, not really so bad because the kind of cholesterol they produce doesn't really affect your body that much. Now we're back to probably they're bad. I subscribe more to the view that eggs are probably okay for some people and not so great for others, and the difficulty is determining which is which, but it's no wonder people just throw up their hands.
12
The only “studies” that prove anything are ones conducted using the “5 step experimental method”. That is the only way to establish causation. Correlation is not causation. Step 5 of course is to repeat the experiment to see if same result is reached- if not, either hypothesis is wrong or not all variables were identified and controlled for. (Its very hard if not impossible to identify and control for all variables with human subjects.) The popular media constantly confuses hypotheses with “facts”.
1
Probably the best advice is not too much and a few eggs a day is still fine. That goes with everything else. Too much not good and moderation is the key.
4
Quick, eat eggs while they’re still good for you.
18
The lead study author Norrina Bai Allen, Ph.D., explains how best to interpret these results.
https://www.inverse.com/article/54088-eggs-cholesterol-levels-heart-disease
Some of the other authors of this study, but not Allen, declared funding sources from multiple pharmaceutical companies, including but not limited to Glaxosmith Kline, AstraZeneca and Bayer. These companies all manufacture drugs to treat heart conditions.
Based on the lead author's interpretation, it shows that one needs to know more than what is in the published paper.
17
@Alan Shar
Can you please explain how a study that shows that it's better to eat less eggs in order to avoid cardiovascular diseases, and as a consequence in order to avoid having to take drugs to treat heart conditions, would somehow ... benefit pharmaceutical companies that sell those drugs?
9
@Ana Luisa
Are you aware that one's body makes around 1500-2000 mg of cholesterol/day? The most cholesterol someone could ingest in a day is around 200-300 mg/day. And when you ingest cholesterol... you're body will make less to compensate for the extra. Cholesterol is not the problem. Inflammation/damage in the arteries is caused by processed carbs/sugar/seed oils. Cholesterol is trying to repair/patch the damage/lesions caused by those toxins.
8
@Sky Useful quote from the researcher "“We really looked at whether individuals who ate a higher number of eggs per week experience higher rates of heart disease and mortality,” she explains. “We found that they did in fact have higher risk, but that the risks were actually explained by the cholesterol contained within the eggs. That was the reason we saw this risk of heart disease.” Allen appears to be quite clear that study found dietary cholesterol in egg yolks to increase risk, but also states that not everyone in the study, only a small (say less than 5%), number actually experienced a heart attack. This study was intended to address whether dietary cholesterol was a risk factor for heart disease-- it was.
3
How were the eggs cooked? It matters. Were they fried in canola oil? Scrambled in butter? Hard boiled?
11
@Melissa Fried OE in butter. All the rest are just fakes
2
@Melissa
I prefer hardboiled health studies, not studies that scramble stats, leading to frying our brains with contradictory health advice.
1
Eggs in context? What else was eaten?
5
@Dalgliesh
Good question - I wonder if people who eat more eggs also eat more bacon and sausage, and more baked items such as cakes and pastries which contain eggs.
Did the study include people who eat eggs but no meat?
7
@Charley horse The study says that they looked at both eggs alone and at over all diet, including fiber, saturated and unsaturated fat, animal fat, and sodium.
1
Stop misinforming! It is a bad study in which cohorts of patients were grouped, and they have results that in the best of cases can generate a hypothesis that should be studied in a serious and well done prospective study.
5
@Daniel Banina
Uh ... so because a study examines different other studies, somehow it would be a bad study ... ?
Taking together the results of many different studies is what scientists have to do all the time. If not, how could they ever draw larger and scientifically based conclusions ... ?
The problem with the current anti-science rhetoric from right-wing politicians and pundits is that all of a sudden, non-scientists see "bad studies" everywhere, and without any good reason ...
As do your idea of a "prospective study": could you please define what you mean by that?
1
This is all just sensationalist gobbledygook. It as been proven long ago that eating cholesterol-rich food does NOT increase your cholesterol level. Furthermore, no one who is serious about science trust studies that depends on self reporting eating habits, as this study does. Even further, corelation is not causation. And finally, how did the people publishing this "study" control for other food and health habits of the participants that may have had much more influence on the minor correlation of heart health than the number of eggs consumed weekly? To be sure eventing consumed in excess is bad for your health, hence, eating 3 or more eggs every day is probably bad for health.
8
a few years ago, a study said that all the previous data about eggs being bad were not accurate.
Then this, then next time, it will be "Oh, we never said THAT, what we meant was...."
They are just scrambling things to the point where it's a total yolk; they really crack me up.
9
The only “study” that establishes causation is the “5 step scientific experimental method”, which everyone hopefully learned about back in grade school. Remember: step 5 is to “repeat the experiment” to see if the same result is achieved. If not, hypothesis is wrong or not all variables were identified and controlled for. Correlation is not causation. This is not confusing.
1
The associations between egg consumption and incident CVD (adjusted HR, 0.99 [95% CI, 0.93-1.05]; adjusted ARD, −0.47% [95% CI, −1.83% to 0.88%]) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.03 [95% CI, 0.97-1.09]; adjusted ARD, 0.71% [95% CI, −0.85% to 2.28%]) .......were no longer significant after adjusting for dietary cholesterol consumption.
“Were No Longer Significant”
This is another in a long line of correlation studies mascarading as causation.
Junk science.
10
@H
1. Nothing in your quote refers to causation. "Association" means statistical correlation, remember?
2. It's not because a study doesn't find any statistically relevant link between two series of numbers, that the study itself is invalid. Scientists aren't magicians, you know. They have to test many hypotheses BEFORE they can know whether there is a statistically significant correlation or not. Finding that there isn't one between a specific series of numbers is as important and interesting as finding that there is one. You can't have one without the other, in science.
3. You omitted the beginning of the abstract:
"The associations of dietary cholesterol or egg consumption with incident CVD and all-cause mortality were monotonic (all P values for nonlinear terms, .19-.83). Each additional 300 mg of dietary cholesterol consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted HR, 1.17 [95% CI, 1.09-1.26]; adjusted ARD, 3.24% [95% CI, 1.39%-5.08%]) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.18 [95% CI, 1.10-1.26]; adjusted ARD, 4.43% [95% CI, 2.51%-6.36%]). Each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted HR, 1.06 [95% CI, 1.03-1.10]; adjusted ARD, 1.11% [95% CI, 0.32%-1.89%]) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.08 [95% CI, 1.04-1.11]; adjusted ARD, 1.93% [95% CI, 1.10%-2.76%])."
So could you please explain what your quote means, concretely?
2
@H: Junk science indeed. probably funded by e cereal industry.
2
The foundation of science is the 5 step experimental method. That is the only way to prove causation. Correlations can get you a “hypothesis” to test with a well designed experiment, which identifies and controls for all the variables. This is very difficult to do with human subjects. Then the experiment must be repeated to verify same result is reached. Otherwise hypothesis false or not all variables affecting outcome were identified.
1
My grandfather ate 12 eggs a day, leaved to be 96 years old, may he RIP. The only thing I have forgot to mention he was eating the organic eggs from his own farm and not the ones bought at US food chain, go wonder what kind of eggs the so called "scientists" have used in their studies. Too many question may produce even more funds for the new studies that will have different results for the new studies ... job security for so called "scientists".
14
Obviously you flunked the statistics course. There are also a lot of people who smoked a pack a day and lived over 90 years. But it's a fact that smokers on average have more than 5x chance to get lung cancer compared to non-smokers. That doesn't mean though that every smoker gets lung cancer. It's the same with cholesterol.
2
@Doubtful
That's absurd.
You can't reject a study by simply "wondering" how it was done all while refusing to start reading it.
And this study shows an AVERAGE 6% risk increase per half egg.
In the case of your grandfather, that means an AVERAGE risk increase of more than 100%. BUT, as this article clearly points out:
1. it's a risk INCREASE. So if his basic risk to get a cardiovascular disease at some point in his lifetime was for instance 5%, then his egg eating habit increased it to 10%, you see?
2. there's nothing in this study that claims that you will die EARLIER than if you wouldn't have eaten less than two eggs a day, as you wrongly assume. It's not a study about life expectancy. So that your grandfather became 96 years old doesn't contradict the findings in this study at all.
3. the only relevant question here is: did your grandfather get, at a certain point in life, a cardiovascular disease? If yes, this study shows that his excessive egg eating habit made it more likely for him to get this disease that if he would only have eating one egg a day (= zero risk increase). If no, that doesn't refute this study at all, as it does not claim that IF you eat so many eggs, you WILL get heart disease ... you see?
Conclusion: if only those scientists finding results that are liked by ordinary citizens would get funding, we'd never have been to the moon (or have double bypasses) in the first place ... ;-)
3
Correlation does not prove causation.
1
Apparently few people read the entire article. Cut back on eggs, folks! If you remove 50% of the yolks in a dish (before scrambling or after frying or boiling is easiest) you can reduce the cholesterol by half without sacrificing flavor. And limit the frequency of eating eggs. But remember, animal meat has a lot of cholesterol, too.
2
@Kate: Yet, people who eat a LOT of animal meat the right kind (organic grass fed, etc.), and a LOT of eggs from free range organic chicken, are very healthy. This study seems to be nothing but an unscientific exercise for money and publicity, based on data mining, with the usual well known fundamental shortcomings of those types of studies. Serious publications, like the NYT, should not give publicity to this kind of junk.
11
@Eva
If you believe that this study isn't valid, you have to:
1. start by reading it (incredible how many comments here skip this obvious first step ..)
2. show us where they made a mistake, and prove scientifically why it is a mistake.
That in your personal life you know people who eat lots of cholesterol and are still alive doesn't refute ANY of the results of this study - first because personal life is extremely subjective, so nothing guarantees that your own subjective experience and impressions are valid for the entire population, and secondly because this study is NOT claiming that any human being who eats a lof of eggs and meat must necessarily be very unhealthy ...
Conclusion: the only thing that isn't "serious" here is your arguments against this study, obviously.
@Eva
The study was an unscientific exercise, but your assertion about the health of people who eat a lot of animal foods should be taken on faith.
I believe in moderation, always.
But if this article is at all cautionary, let's encourage our dear president to eat an egg everyday!
4
So eggs are once again being considered "cholesterol bombs" which was the typical phrasing used 15 years ago in the media. I'll stick with lowfat plain yogurt no sugary fruit added.
p.s. I like that the article pic is of a fried egg.
1
Okay, so it’s inconclusive and we have to decide for ourselves. Still, it’s science, it’s a large study by reputable people, and I appreciate the New York Times for informing us.
8
@Robert Holladay: As any statistician knows you can find all kinds of crazy meaningless corelations in data mining. It is NOT science.
3
Let’s just face it, the average American lifestyle is bad for you. Articles like this are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic of modern nutrition. We need to look at food and health and well-being holistically, rather than identifying each little bit, because people will throw up their hands and say, look if everything is bad for us then why even bigger trying. And really it’s all about moderation. The occasional egg is fine, but if it’s an egg McMuffin everyday for breakfast then things are going to get bad.
Eat less, move more instead of the modern way of eat more, move less.
12
@Robert Grant
What this study actually shows is that an egg a day is perfectly okay, it's two eggs a day that slightly increases your heart disease risk.
Of course, if you live a healthy lifestyle, then that heart disease risk is low, and eating two eggs a day may increase it a bit, but not enormously.
That the Times writes about news like this allows each one of us to take our own decisions. I wouldn't want the media to silent all these studies to then come up with one "holistic" approach or advice, because that doesn't exist yet, science has not been able to prove causal relations yet.
Imho what is urgently needed, rather than silencing scientific studies, is a huge investment in science education (for kids and adults alike).
On MANY questions, science is NOT "settled" yet, but entirely in the stage that precedes "settled science". That means that all over the world, many studies are being done, many methodologies are being invented and tested, many different and often mutually conflicting results are being obtained, and that is normal and good, it certainly does not mean that somehow all those studies would not be valid.
It's precisely because so much hard work goes into this stage that once science is "settled" on a specific question, its results are so trustworthy.
In the meanwhile, the most rational thing to do is to carefully read articles like this, to know what has just been proven and what not, and then to consciously adapt our lifestyles accordingly.
6
I love all the personal anecdotes. This type of research has accomplished one important objective: Sowing confusion and doubt in the citizenry in the name of science, while providing jobs to researchers and their universities, the propagandists for pharmaceutical and egg industries, and federal agencies that subsidize them. This is how deeply entrenched the disease industry is in our nation and the world. Readers find facts and construct anecdotal arguments to reinforce and justify their existing beliefs, choices and behaviors. No concern for anything beyond "me." The inevitable conclusion that "more research is needed" ensures this cycle will continue undisturbed. And that health insurance costs continue to skyrocket as people consume without consequences.
6
@JCX
Uh ... why would you want researchers to stop doing research and the media to stop reporting on their findings as long as on a specific scientific question, science hasn't settled yet ... ?
And of course, you cannot possibly reject the results of a study without having even read it (let alone found a mistake in it), just because you IMAGINE that the egg industry must have financed this one.
In real life, there's only one solution here: we support research that leads to settled science, including during the years/decades needed to get there, or we'll never have any settled science at all.
Blaming scientists for "sowing confusion" when science isn't settled yet and scientists publish their current results is the most irrational thing I've ever seen.
Conclusion: what your comment proves is how bad science education in the US is today. Silencing scientists or defunding them will NEVER lead to better knowledge (or better policies), of course.
4
Here it comes: the plethora of know it all beliefs about diet and health from the semi- informed populace to justify their choices and behaviors with no accountability for the consequences. This underscores how and why our population continues to consume the unhealthiest diet on the planet and consumes more disease care (aka health care) than any other nation at a cost that is crippling business and taxpayers due to our perverse system of employer based health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid. The only solution is to make people responsible for the cost of their self induced diseases and end demand for this unnecessary food source. That and recognizing the egg (and poultry) industry is a cruel, environmentally destructive industry is propped up by the federal government (Dept of Agriculture). Its no mystery why progress is never made. And why neither party offers any meaningful solutions.
3
@JCX
So your solution is to implement a policy that would massively make people sick and die prematurely, and when that happens, you imagine, people will miraculously become better at reading and interpreting articles about science ... ?
A bit weird, no?
What about more and better science education, for instance ... ? ;-)
As to the egg industry: it's no more polluting or cruel than the red meat industry, so if your idea is to substitute eggs with red meat, it will neither increase people's health, nor reduce pollution (on the contrary).
Studies show that in order to stop climate change, we don't have to go back to pre-civilization ways of living. We just have to switch (when it comes to food) from industrial agriculture to organic and local agriculture.
Organic chicken farms, for instance, respect chickens' needs, and the fact that they aren't constantly stressed is one of the reasons why their eggs contain less cholesterol. So there ARE solutions available here.
And of course, only one political party is supporting them, whereas the other is doing the exact opposite.
The only reason why legislative progress is so slow, in a democracy, is because many citizens don't have access to or refuse to inform themselves, when it comes to who's doing what in DC. And then they easily become victims of cynicism, imagining that all politicians are "bad" etc. And then they stop voting, thereby allowing a corrupt minority to take control.
Cynicism never helped us move forward...
5
I'm sorry: I cannot believe any of this. Studies of cholesterol have been compromised from the 1970s, with the cherry-picked data of Ancel Keys that tied dietary fat to heart disease, the huge surge of statin drugs in our health care system—many so-called studies underwritten by the drug companies themselves, and actualy data misrepresented in the conclusions. Remember the butter vs. margarine arguments? Butter will hurt you, while margarine—hydrogenated fats, now known as TRANS FATS— were supposed to support health? People ate trans fats for decades, thinking they were making the "healthy choice." Trans fats are undeniably harmful, more so than an egg could ever be.
The data from this study relies on self-reports: another source of compromised data.
I take this seriously given the wretched history of research and reporting in this area.
Excuse me, as I go make my breakfast eggs.
27
@Sharon
1. Ancel Keys did not cherry-pick data.
2. Statins work.
3. Scientific research revealed the harmful effects of trans fats. The same types of research, and often the same studies, also show a health risks associated with consuming large amounts of saturated fat.
4. This analysis of six studies does not conclude that eating eggs is harmful; it showed that each additional 300 mg of cholesterol conferred some additional risk. While the body of the study is not yet available to the general public, one might reasonably conclude that moderation is best when it comes to egg consumption.
5. Many studies rely on self-reported data. While there are errors in such data, it can still provide valuable information.
6. Reporting of scientific research is often problematic. The PURE study is a case in point. The headline was: "New Study Favors Fats over Carbs", which is nearly opposite the actual results of the study. This article about the egg study is an exception, but it is always wise to read the scientific study in question.
4
@childofsol
Ancel Keys used the data from the countries that supported his hypothesis and excluded datat from the countries, such as Holland and Norway, with more saturated fat in the diet and less heart disease nationally, and less saturated fat in the diet but more heart disease, as in Chile. That is the essence of cherry picking of data. Perhaps you have another name for it? Judicious exclusion? The result is the same: results that cannot stand on their own merits.
10
@Sharon
First of all, Keys' "Seven countries study", which is the one you're referring to, has been done in the 1950s, not the 1970s.
Secondly, blaming a scientific study of "cherry-picking" means that its selection of individuals studied is NOT representative for the group of people referred to in the conclusions of that study.
In THIS specific case, you can't claim that that's true.
What Keys wanted to study is the relationship between saturated fats and heart disease, in populations who eat a lot of those fats and where heart disease rates are high - contrary to populations where eating lots of fat is common but heart diseases rates low, or populations with high heart disease rates but where eating fat isn't common at all.
Why THIS kind of population?
Because IF you want to test the hypothesis that INDEPENDENTLY from other risk factors, eating lots of fat IS a risk factor for heart disease, you have to select this kind of population, as in populations with low heart disease rates you can't study the subject of high heart disease rates, whereas in populations who eat a lot of fat but that have low disease rates, other risk factors may be low and explain the low rates.
So ONLY in populations where both numbers are high, does a study looking for statistical correlations make sense, you see? Keys did NOT know on beforehand, though, that his hypothesis would be confirmed, that's precisely why he did the study.
And for decades, studies re-confirmed his findings...
1
Are eggs from truly small farm free range chickens the same as factory eggs? They seem like two completely different things to me.
10
The dietary cholesterol only makes a difference in individuals who a genetically susceptible to that, i.e. who can efficiently transfer the cholesterol in the gut for systemic use. And that’s only 10% of people or so - not common, but large enough to see a difference in big studies like this.
3
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect."
Nutrition is one of the hardest sciences to establish cause and effect. DYK smoking doesn't cause lung cancer (it's correlative)?
I'm still under the impression that The China Study is the closest thing to perfect nutrition. I would love to read an update to it or a critique.
4
Risk of dying of heart disease in US? 1 in 4. 25%. 17% increase due to eggs. .25 X 1.17=.29%. A relatively small hike. If you don't smoke, if your blood pressure is low and your LDL is relatively low, your risk numbers are even much lower.
5
The National Egg Producers Association has proven once again the incredible edible egg is not harmful. People are confused by wet water and dose specificity.
2
Where is the raw data? Relative percentages are meaningless. The "study" is actually a meta-analysis of other studies, and it's correlation rather than causation.
9
@PhillyPerson
If you're interested in epidemiology, why didn't you click on the link to the study in this article ... ?
And of course "relative percentages" aren't meaningless, when the very OBJECT of a study is to compare one number to another (the heart disease risk of people eating diet X without eggs, compared to the heart disease risk of people eating diet X with eggs).
Comparative studies always lead to "relative" results, remember? "Relative" doesn't mean that it's not certain, of you have to take is with a grain of salt. "Relative", in science, means that there is a RELATIONSHIP between two parameters. Studying relationships is at the very core of many scientific activity, it's not something that somehow would reduce the "meaning" of the results.
As to the study being a meta-analysis: it's a study, not a "study". Part of scientific activity consists of reading other studies and developing a scientific method that allows you to compare them and integrate their results. You may read that study and then find an error in it, but you can't claim that it's less scientifically valid because it's a meta-analysis, you see?
Finally, there's nothing magical or more valid about "raw data". In science, "raw data" refers to what has been observed, without taking elements of bias into account. So raw data can be scientific or not, which then has to do with the observation data, but you HAVE to subsequently eliminate all bias, IF you want to use them in a scientific study.
3
@PhillyPerson
Right on PhillyPerson! This is not a new study, it's an analysis of old studies. Publish or perish aided by lobbyists is ruining independent research!
2
@CAR
That's not how scientific progress is made, you know.
On any scientific question where science isn't "settled" yet, each year many new studies are being done, which all test out different methodologies, and investigate different individuals.
The next stage, in such a scientific field, is to bring together all these studies, and to analyze whether their results have something in common or not - which is scientific research in itself, as you need specific scientific methods to compare studies in a valid way.
"Publish or perish" is clearly a problem in the way that we organize and fund scientific research ("we" being "we the people who vote for politicians who install these laws").
But that doesn't mean that comparative studies would all of a sudden by definition be invalid, let alone no longer necessary from a scientific point of view ... !
2
After a heart attack and three stents, I learned that eating with “moderation” isn’t enough. I eat plants only. Fat and cholesterol are enemies (as is sugar). The data here may not be conclusive, but there is other conclusive data that limiting animal products is beneficial for health in every way. The side effect is that it is also beneficial for the planet.
13
The cost of your learning was millions of dollars of medical care, which is bankrupting our nation and many others. And I will bet you had to figure this out on your own. The disease industry exists to treat disease, not prevent it. The disease industry loves eggs, cows milk,beef, chicken, fish, butter, oil, cigarettes, and alcohol because they provide "demand" for more and more and more medical services and products.
5
"Current recommendations regarding dietary cholesterol...is confusing." Not really. The anti-cholesterol advice is from registered nutritionists who have taken a pledge to support conventional thinking. Even if they personally know better. The non-concern about cholesterol is from current scientific research. As long as big shots make money from this "conventional thinking" the "official" stance will remain the public face of nutrition. However, there is an increasing number of nutritionists that are breaking away, free to share the truth.
7
The dietary caution wheel has turned 180° once again! There are many studies out there that show that dietary cholesterol is not associated with heart disease. And eggs have heart protecting qualities. They’re also complete nutrition.
16
@Francesca
Actually, we only have epidemiological evidence about eggs, for the moment.
That means that the best that science can do, when it comes to extremely complex questions such as the link between a specific food and a specific disease, is investigating and establishing statistical correlations, not yet causal relations.
During such a stage of research, it is normal to have many different studies with many different outcomes.That in itself doesn't invalidate any of those studies, it's just what happens as long as scientists didn't discover a way to "settle" this question yet.
Personally, for instance, I've been eating two eggs (without bacon) for breakfast for years. What this study tells me is that doing so might INCREASE my heart disease risk by 17%. But I don't smoke, exercise regularly, meditate, eat fish but no meat and rarely poultry, drink with moderation, and have regular, meaningful social contacts. My blood pressure is perfect, as is my blood cholesterol level. In other words, my risk of getting a cardiovascular diseases, independently from eggs, is quite low. So ... that very low risk is increased by let's say 20% because of my breakfast, this study tells me, but as that means that it's still very low, I'll continue to eat them daily ... BUT might easier switch to oatmeal once in a while.
And if the next epidemiological study has a different result, I'll adapt my behavior again. Simply because that's the most rational thing to do, no?
3
Not clear if the study included anyone but the usual suspects-white men.
10
@Urban.warrior:
Most research published in the major journals are done properly, with adequate study design. This means they follow the basic requirement that types of people included in the study (cohorts) are similar to/match the same diversity/demographics of people found in the general population.
So we should assume the study included all people in a balanced mix representative of society -- so yes: women, people-of-color, people of varying ages, ethnic and Asian people, "rich and poor", high and low education -- and not only white men.
3
Click on the link to the study, which indicates the participants.
1
55% women, 31% African American, ~5% Hispanic American and ~2% Chinese American
1
"Sex without sin is like a boiled egg without salt."
Dorothy Parker had it right.
9
Leave...Eggs...Alone!!!
11
Say it ain't so...
3
@PJP
It ain't so. This is hogwash.
Will be making the the chicken and escarole salad with anchovy croutons recipe that was just posted in this newspaper for tomorrow night’s dinner. It includes “... an egg yolk, which is typically emulsified into a creamy dressing, is plopped directly onto the lettuces, leaving you to break it and let it mingle with the salty, garlicky, lemony dressing, which is bolstered with a bit of soy sauce. (If the whole, raw egg yolks freak you out, swap them for jammy soft-boiled eggs or crispy fried eggs.)” Study be damned!
12
@Molly Bloom:
You have a right to ignore any study, and scientific facts revealed by a multitude of studies.
Whether you heed or ignore, scientific facts will affect you. And even cause an early death.
Enjoy the food. Try not to be a food glutton.
Fat kills.
2
RR Sugar kills. Fat helps the body.
Combine sugar and fat standard American diet that most definitely kills.
2
@R. R.
Fats and fat-soluble vitamins are essential nutrients. You will literally die without any fat in the diet.
1
Just do 40 push-ups every day.
3
March 15, 2019. Eggs are found to be bad. Again.
5
Please provide randomized controlled studies showing causation at a statistically significant level and leave all the other studies to those who have an unhealthy need to hem and haw or otherwise worry about what they should and shouldn't eat.
Articles like this do not help the public. I do not deny their usefulness to researchers but they are not useful for the uninitiated public. All they succeed in doing is to cause people not to believe anything health related especially regarding nutrition.
Like a prior report in this paper regarding AIDS and a purported new treatment where no new treatment exists, this report is misleading and a clear attempt at grabbing headlines yet offering little substance.
29
Who is gonna pay the $100 million likely needed for that randomized study of egg consumption?
Am I old enough to just die of natural causes? Just in case I am, I probably shouldn't waste what little time I have left reading such articles, and should just dine on an egg or something.
21
Go vegan. Stop the unnecessary suffering of billions of farm animals and livestock. Get the long list of health benefits as a bonus.
10
I eat four eggs a day.
9
Studies are a dime a dozen. And about as dispositive as a Trump tweet. Yawning.
5
The article proves only one thing: a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. This study proves nothing....operative word "proves." It's like the study in which pennies were attached to rats and the rats died...concluding money kills.
Eat your eggs!
11
I read this just as I was finishing a light brunch of
scrambled eggs and nicely buttered toast........
3
Eggs are the quiche of death.
13
While you’re worried about eating eggs being the cause of your inevitable demise, you could get hit by a car. So enjoy your eggs and stop worrying.
7
@RM
Actually, the risk of dying by being hit by a car is higher than the risk of dying from eating 2 eggs daily.
So if we'd following your logic, you should rather say: go and throw yourself at a car and stop worrying ... ;-)
2
Shame on you NYT for publishing an article about a study which is not scientific, does not do any thing to progress and debate and and just creates more confusion to the readers.
If someone did a controlled randomized study with eggs and placebo everything else being equal, it would make sense to publish such a study. No wonder people don't trust scientists and MSM any more.
14
@MacMan
You clearly didn't read this article carefully.
It reports a new study that IS "a controlled randomized study with eggs and placebo everything else being equal".
Any reasons why you're railing so easily and without any fact-checking against one of the world's best (and most successful) newspapers ... ?
Actually not but the adjustments were carefully done to get as close as possible to that
Someone funded this??? That's all I have to say. The rest of my objections are moot.
7
@BG
So you're part of the sect that believes that scientists should do their jobs without eating or having a roof over their head or healthcare or a family.
Can you please explain how starting to starve scientists would somehow lead to more, rather than less science ... ?
Thanking you in advance (no irony here).
Yes. The American Heart Association and the NIH.
Moderation, moderation, moderation. I see food and I eat it. Including eggs. One egg, every other day isn’t going to kill me.
But I eat small portions at home and dining out and I am never afraid to ask for a take-home bag.
6
I question all of these food-related studies. Exactly how was the study conducted? Who were the subjects? How closely were they monitored? How long was the study? ???????
And we have had studies that were later proven to produce biased results because of data manipulation. So here we are, now attacking the defenseless egg! I've always loved eggs and eat them often. My cousin has always eaten 2 eggs EVERY day. I suppose she could regret that, but she just celebrated her 91st birthday so I doubt she's sorry! So my advice to all....eggs are GOOD for you. Eat them whenever the mood strikes!
5
@J. G. Smith
No, that's not QUESTIONING, that's rejecting it on the basis of your own subjective opinion about eggs, combined with cynicism.
If you would have been serious about your questions, you would have clicked on the link to the study, and then have found all the answers.
You decided to complain instead ... why?
(By the way, I eat two eggs a day too, so this isn't about eggs, but about your irrational rejection of a scientific study.)
2
There is hardly any mention of experimental outcomes involving the consumption of egg whites only. One would think that any controlled experiments would involve measuring the outcomes for consuming eggs with and without yolk.
3
Take a statin as I have for many, many years and your cholesterol levels drop to healthy levels and you can eat what you want, including eggs!
2
The clue is moderation in all things including moderation. Being a nurse I find these studies increasingly frustrating. they're changing their minds constantly about what is good and not good. At the end of the day we're all going to die so enjoy yourselves and eat what you want is my opinion.
6
”The research doesn’t matter.”
Sigh.
I don’t kniw whether to shake, smack or hang my head at this comment.
Research always matters. Even if it is inconclusive, confusing to the layperson or inconvenient to our preference of living. Every building block of a growing knowledge base toward constructing a healthier and safer society is good.
8
...as long as it is good science, with good study design, that is. Which this appears to be.
How many 180 degree reversals are we going to have on eggs and egg yolks?
We have heard everything from they are a killer to how the cholesterol in eggs is "different," so not to worry about it and instead take advantage of the many benefits eggs provide.
Now this study? And this is supposed to "clear up" confusion? Maybe in the same fashion that Trump is "making America great again."
9
If this study were funded by the Egg Board, you should be worried. But it was hounded by AHA and NIH.
I wonder if this study controlled for male vs. female. Too often studies neglect this important and obvious differentiation.
4
Why do these articles never mention that the body produces cholesterol, and once women go through menopause, their cholesterol can rise? No matter what they eat. This vegan was mighty surprised.
9
I suspect the study ignored women and only concentrated on one specific demographic.
1
55% women, 31% African Americans, ~5% Hispanic Americans, ~2% Chinese Americans. This is all in the JAMA article. Better to go read it than opine blindly. It seems to me that MSM articles about science try their best to distill science for the lay reader, but they cannot explain all of the strengths and weaknesses of a study. If you’re intrigued or interested by a NYT article like this, then inform yourself by reading the original material. Why not?
1
Study data can be manipulated to promote an agenda. Perhaps in this case it is a vegan agenda. I eat a hard boiled egg every morning as a source of nutrition. What I don't eat is bacon or sausage, with all those preservatives that damage blood vessels. When blood vessels are damaged our bodies produce cholesterol to repair those blood vessels. That cholesterol clogs arteries if those arteries are damaged enough. Were the people in this study eating eggs only or were there meats with preservatives included in their diets as well? You can't buy a pre made egg sandwich anywhere without that preservative meat included.
7
The incredible edible egg!
Eat less food, mostly plants.
Hmm who paid for nice natural eggs to get slammed? I eats lots of eggs, and coconut oil, and heavy cream, and bacon.
My HDL is 147 my fluffy LDL indicates no issues. My blood pressure is normal, my triglycerides are low. So just ignoring another report which doesn’t indicate as others have said what hope of eggs, what type of diet these people ate, did they smoke etc.
Eggs are good fodder for the brain and just good nutrient in general compared to grain foods like bread, sugary foods, oatmeal that companies want you to eat instead.
7
AHA and NIH paid for science. And you are fortunate to not be a hyper-absorber of cholesterol. Doesn’t mean it would work for everyone.
1
@Mary
Food companies want us to eat so-called value-added foods, not commodities.
The first category includes sweetened cereals and Egg McMuffins, both highly-palatable and energy-dense. Cereal grains, on the other hand, are commodity foods such as oats, wheat, rice, and corn.
In the context of overall diet, pitting one food against another makes little sense. Eggs are one of the less expensive sources of protein, and can be used in many different food dishes. Cereals (whole grains) provide not just energy - which we all need and should not be afraid of - but fiber, vitamins and minerals, and phytonutrients. The available evidence indicates that animal foods should be consumed in moderation; there is no evidence to warrant limiting whole cereal consumption other than to eat within one's energy needs.
So eggs were bad and then they weren't and now they are again. And butter was bad and trans fats were better and now trans fats are bad and butter is better. I think I'll reserve judgment on all of this for now.
8
While I wish everyone a long and engaged life, I would normally respect someone's decision to live a shorter life with more infirmity in return for eating as badly as they please. The problem is that the rest of us pay for the care required for all those diseases contracted.
1
Hahaha!
And tomorrow they will be good for you again, because cholesterol is good this week, and was bad last one.
And tomatoes are back in, now that the fad that they make holes in your intestines has faded into the background.
Food fads, oh my, a laugh a minute.
Just leave red wine and dark chocolate alone. Then you and I will have a problem.
3
... and what about statins? Do they make a difference?
1
What’s the alternative - glycemic busting cereals, no way, bread , no- gluten bad, dairy - yogurt , don’t even go there. I think I’ll stick to scrapple a universally acknowledged bad for you yet strangely life enhancing food!
3
Senseless. Tens maybe hundreds of generations eating eggs and living large. Who funds these inane studies anyway? Can't they find a better cause to study?
4
I always had heard that the chicken egg was perfect food,why?
The yolk has fat in it and the white part of the egg has an component food that destroys that fat .
Wonder if anyone else had read about this?
3
When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs
Every morning to help me get large
And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs
So I'm roughly the size of a barge
6
I wonder if it's the eggs themselves, or the salt that usually accompanies them.
2
I'm sick and tired of the endless contradictory "advice". Wine is good for you, no wait a minute it's bad. Coffee is good for you, but on second thought it's bad. Good fats are good, but all fats are bad. Sugar is the ultimate villain, even too much fruit is now bad! Even tomatoes, eggplants and other nightshades will kill you! Whatever... I'm going to eat what I enjoy because my days, like everyone else's are numbered. It's less stressful, and I've heard that's actually good for you.
11
The on again / off again Egg ! Its eaters are more likely to die from confusion than from cholesterol.
7
"Eat real food, mostly plants, not too much."
And, perhaps Michael Pollan should have added, stop mouthing cliches:
"we're all going to die anyway"
"science is constantly contradicting itself"
Yes, we're all going to die, and in order to get from here across the room you need to put one foot in front of the other (and some curmudgeon is going to write, "Well, I could hop" - yes, you could)
And in regard to diet, do you know that as long as a century ago, there was a general overall consensus that, for the best diet - to perhaps oversimplify a bit: "eat real food, lots of plants, not too much"?
The devil is in the details - (and remember, demon as deus inversus). Drink some coffee, have some chocolate, eat an egg or two, and, before you get worked up again: "Eat real food, lots of plants, not too much."
Why?
Because by maintaining a healthy body as long as you can, you have more opportunities to assist the world in going through this profound transition to a new era (or, as David Korten puts it, to assist the "Great Turning"; what Robert Thurman calls the Global Renaissance, and Willis Harman referred to as the Second Copernican Revolution)
www.remember-to-breathe.org
3
My cardiologist told me, "if everyone was vegan, i'd be out of a job."
3
And then he prescribed a statin, ordered some more lab tests, and asked you to follow up in 6 months--so he could keep himself in his job, keep you dependent on him, and ensure that he can feel good about what he does, keep his practice going, and pay for his second home, Audi car, and golf club membership.
2
Stop eating eggs and you'll be a winner,
Do not be a cholesterol sinner.
It's so hard for us to know,
which way we should go,
I guess I'll have the chicken for dinner...
5
"A large new study may help resolve at least some of the confusion." No, it won't. The verdict will continue to seesaw between good and bad, as it has for decades.
4
Every other year, a new study shows that eggs are either bad for you or good for you. Do we really care any more?
2
I would just like to point out that getting born will kill one—it's just a question of when and how. Enjoy your time here, especially if you love eggs. And remember that we all live forever.
4
No disrespect intended to the authors of the study but the 70's called, they want their studies back.
4
I never took cholesterol medication.
My readings are below 200 At my age
To heck with your research study article.
Eggs have been praised and berated.
Eggs are a great source of protein and good fat.
This is just dumb science
4
I swear, one day it's okay to eat eggs and the next it isn't. Maybe we should just eat healthy and stop reading this stuff.
3
we have been here before and it was debunked.
3
Please provide both the absolute and relative risk.
1
Who paid for this study? Who benefits?
Show me the money.
2
AHA and NIH supported it
Article says American Heart Association and NIH and Northwestern.
As others have noted, those of us older than, say 30, have been through this before. Maybe the earlier studies that dictated that eggs were bad, then good were less rigorous than this study that suggests they are good in moderation. Maybe we won't reach a different conclusion in 3-10 years. Maybe.
I'm not changing my egg consumption based on this study. I'm also not giving up my glass of wine each evening. All my grandparents lived long healthy lives - 6 to 12 years longer than their cohort average. My parents didn't. My parents smoked. I don't smoke.
I'm pretty much done with dietary population studies defining my choices. The inherent limits to accurately measuring the impact of diet from observational studies is powerfully dissuasive.
I come from good stock and will eat what my grandparents ate (except for meat - they raised their own. I don't eat any), get as much exercise as I can handle and will continue to be grateful each day.
When nutrition scientists find something better than self-reported observations, I'll tune back in. I'm not being snarky here; I get that long term controlled diet studies are not feasible or likely ethical. No illusion that this is easy. Also no illusion that this is the final take.
5
So. I’m a vegetarian. I eat minimal dairy but I do eat 1-2 eggs a day. Does this mean my cholesterol risk is elevated or is it low because of the absence of meat?
1
@Carla C
Absence of meat may be the reason. Age and hereditary are factors too. Cholesterol levels naturally increase with age. My mom didn’t take any meds until her 80’s. She never ate eggs but loved her salami and cured meats. I think high cholesterol foods eaten in moderation can be part of a healthy life style.
2
Tofu scrambles taste great!
3
This JAMA article is a meta analysis of pooled data from six cohort studies. In other words, non-randomized inadequately controlled data that frankly can’t prove causation no matter how you spin it. Going back to Framingham, coming to a conclusion about the risk of CAD vis-a-vis specific dietary intake of certain foods high in cholesterol remains questionable and doesn’t address conflicting data from populations with diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol who have much lower rates of CAD. I don’t advocate the Adkins diet, but the lowest LDL and highest HDL numbers I ever had in my life were after I spent several months eating primarily bacon and eggs while keeping my wife company while she tried Adkins. At the end of the day, I suspect it’s not the cholesterol you eat that’s the problem; it’s the cholesterol and other lipid moieties your own liver makes that contributes to atherosclerosis. I don’t think it’s possible to spend your life eating mass quantities of fat and protein that the fad diets advocate, but it sure makes more sense to me to stay away from high fructose corn syrup and refined carbohydrates than to fret about a couple eggs a day.
24
I used to have marginally hight cholesterol and then I gave up sugar. No chocolate, no snacks or dessert and suddenly my cholesterol rate went down.
Wish someone would investigate the link between sugar and cholesterol.
23
@cphnton
It's doubtful anyone will investigate that link because the sugar lobby is much more powerful in Washington than the egg lobby.
2
Here in Spain they eat plenty of eggs and meat, as well as cheese and salads, and after the Japanese live the longest. However in the cities they are starting to eat more junk food and so I think that will effect the overall health in time. My cholesterol has always been a bit on the high side and still is, but I still regularly eat eggs, often 2 at the time, seafood, full cream milk and cheese. I am now nearly 91, live alone, take care of my garden. I never have breakfast, take no drugs of any kind, and never have. The important thing is to eat real food in moderation, and stay well away from anti-biotics, which are handed out like aspirins these days, and keep moving!
31
And be lucky by having good genes.
3
Egg yolks, just like shrimp, are little cholesterol bombs. It's clear that many NYT readers simply don't want to accept that. Too bad. This excellent article offers advice for people who need to watch their cholesterol intake, through their diet. You can make delicious omelettes with egg whites, by the way.
Another thing to watch for if you have too much bad cholesterol are saturated fats. There's this myth that extremely dark chocolate is healthy. Yes, that's true, but not if you consume an entire bar containing 40 grams of saturated fats every day, when, in fact, your maximum intake of saturated fats per day should not be more than 20/22 grams....and that means no more than 20 grams spread over all the food you consume in just one day. Read the labels of what you eat and keep looking for saturated fats. You'll be amazed at the amount of saturated fat in coconut fat and coconut milk, for example.
9
Cholesterol and saturated fats are the shiny object for you, when you should be looking at sugar and insulin resistance.
2
I love eggs, two everyday and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. My cholesterol levels are stable in the low range but they go up if for example I eat too much cheese. So I believe there are lots of different factors that can influence cholesterol. Before, you could read on my blood test results "at risk of cardiovascular disease" because my cholesterol levels were way too low and this until I started eating more eggs one year ago.
We need some cholesterol, as we need some saturated fats in our diet, because our body needs it. Cutting back on those two (for example) because a study said so (and there are many contradicting studies on this matter) is just plain stupid, unless you have some particular disease and are monitored by a doctor. This present study is an observation and that's it, one that needs to be taken into account with lots of others.
3
@Mary yes we need cholesterol that’s why our liver produces all we need .
3
Where are any studies indicating that having low a cholesterol is bad for you if you are currently healthy. The only ones I am aware of are those in which those individuals are already sick (e.g., cancer) and malnourished so highly likely to die in the near term. So the low cholesterol causes problems argument is just reverse causation - the cholesterol is low because there is a problem.
2
I don't often eat eggs, but when I do, I make sure they are cooked thoroughly.
I've read many of the comments and few things come to mind. I believe to do a proper study:
1.- Blood Cholesterol must be measured periodically (especially LDL and Triglycerides levels).
2.-Obesity must be considered (BMI).
3.-Carbohydrate intakes (simple and complex) must also be measured.
4.-Exercise, the amount and type must be a consideration.
5.-Genetic predispositions must be measured.
6. Total cholesterol intake from all sources must be measured.
7.- What are the results if one is a veterinarian?
8.-The amounts of saturated fats vs. mono and poly saturation.
9.-The effects of trans fats.
10.-Alcohol intake (amount)
11.- Caffeine’s effects on outcome
12.-Smokers vs. Nonsmokers
There are probably a few more items that someone could think of to add to the list, but I think to be able to say definitively what increases the risk of Heart Disease, one must look at the entire picture.
12
@biglatka
I love question #7 - but I wonder, do you perhaps mean vegetarian? :) :)
7
@Anastasia V. No. Veterinarians tolerate cholesterol better. There’s a study that proves it. I think.
1
Great questions. In the JAMA article, most of these are addressed pretty well. Except genetics.
Any article basing its discussion on a single study as this one does could do a much better job by reporting the limitations inherent in such a narrow view.
Even more essential is the need for transparency given the enormous profitability of high cholesterol treatments. Who funded this research at every stage of its development?
14
I don't eat red meat very often, so I will keep eating eggs which come from the chickens next door.
10
Great. After heart bypass surgery, I cut way down on fats. After my doctor diagnosed me as prediabetic, I cut way down on carbohydrates. Eggs became a staple in my diet and a significant source of protein. Now I have to cut them out.
6
@Rocky
It’s difficult to discern from this article, but I believe the issue with eggs is the cholesterol contained in the yolk. Many studies I’ve read on this seem to be confused about the fact we can actually separate the yolk from the white. Which is how *I* eat eggs.
Do some additional research, and I bet you’ll find you can have plenty of eggs—just not the yolks. (And sometimes I like a break from boiled egg whites; I scramble the whites with just a bit of yolk for color and flavor.)
3
@DammitJanet
I don't know what your circumstances are, but cooking food with the intent (and follow-through) to thrown half of it away is incredibly wasteful. If one is suffering from an IBD flare, undergoing cancer treatment, or is frail and elderly, eating egg whites might be the way to get some easily-digested protein.
For the rest of us, tossing out egg yolks is akin to a hunter taking only the tender cuts of meat and leaving the rest to rot in the field. Especially egregious if we're also eating significant quantities of saturated fats, which affect blood lipids more than dietary cholesterol.
Egg yolks have nutritional value, and their production requires not just hens but fossil fuels and other inputs. If you don't want to eat much cholesterol, eat fewer eggs.
What is confusing in the article is the expression of quantities. The mathematical assumptions required to follow the reported work are not intuitive.
1. One needs to know that the recommended daily nutritional guideline for consumption of cholesterol from all sources is 300 mgs a day.
2. The study focuses on consuming an *additional* amount of cholesterol: E.g., "...for each additional 300 milligrams a day of cholesterol in the diet, there was a 17 percent increase of risk of CVD and 18 percent increase of death from any cause." Does this refer to twice the recommended intake of cholesterol - that is, consuming an *additional* 300 mgs beyond the first intake of 300 mgs? What does "additional" mean here?
3. Then a reader also needs to know that a simple egg has about 185 mg of of cholesterol or, as noted right there on the carton, about 65% of the daily recommended amount. If the rest of one's daily diet is low in cholesterol (let's say no to rare consumption of red meat, no to very rare consumption of processed foods, etc.), isn't one well within the recommended 300 mgs when eating just one boiled egg a day?
4. What is the baseline for the "17 percent increased risk" of death due to CVD or the "18 percent increased risk" of death from any cause? A percentage increase compared to what?
A limitation in my comment is that I haven't yet read the actual study. Reading news articles about it, however, makes for some puzzling math assumptions.
28
Good questions. You should read the article. The “additional” refers to the fact that there is a linear relationship. So, for 300 compared to 0 mg, or 600 compared to 300 mg per day, the risk increases 17%. Or for 600 compared with 0, risk increases 1.17 x 1.17 = 1.37, or 37%.
@KathL
thank you
Not maybe, definitely. To consider any other answer, to equivocate on the negative health impact of egg consumption is to do a disservice to the Times readers. There is no debate on this anymore unless you are intimidated by the egg industry. The cholesterol, saturated fat, and animal protein in eggs have negative impact on long term health. Full stop.
10
@arusso Well just what are we supposed to eat? Like someone posted earlier I've cut way back on sugar and carbohydrates. I'm 68 and pretty healthy, but you're going to have to give me a lot more than this study before I give up eggs.
2
@Ginger oats
I'm surprised how good fruit & veges taste. And a PBJ on wheat is good anytime
1
It's no wonder people are so confused about what to eat and drink. I had to fight my mom for years before I convinced her that the many decades she kept hearing that coffee was bad for her had been proven wrong. Now 92 and healthy, she's found coffee has increased her mood, energy level and alertness.
13
“This study takes into account the general quality of the diet and adjusts for it." Sorry, but I simply cannot understand how, with all of the variabilities built into a study of 30,000 people, all the various aspects that make up each of us can be filtered out so that cholesterol levels in 30,000 people can be attributed to one food item.
37
@HKGuy
I completely agree. Hardly any food has the nutrition of an egg and anything discouraging their consumption is foolish.
A silly study, a silly result.
2
Just because you can't understand how something is accomplished doesn't mean that thing wasn't accomplished.
5
You should read the study. That’s not what was done. Diet quality was very carefully assessed. The egg-CVD association and the dietary cholesterol-CVD associations were looked at separately with adjustment for other dietary factors. Then the egg association was adjusted for cholesterol intake, egg association was attenuated. This suggests that it is the cholesterol in the eggs that explained the egg association.
1
I am a physician, geneticist and fairly well educated in the value and limitation of this type of studies. If egg consumption and the amount of cholesterol consumed is hypothesized to cause harm why not measure cholesterol level in the subject's blood?
You know before you started the study that whichever way the result comes out, increased risk or no increased risk, it would not settle anything and only creates confusion in the minds of people not trained in epidemiology and statistics.
No amount of fine print or disclaimers that the study did not intend to answer the question about health effects of egg consumption will make the average consumer better informed. In my humble opinion this kind of studies and their being reported and discussed in prestigious newspapers such as the NYT and national TV news outlets make more people lose faith in science. What was the point of doing this study?
NYT should deemphasize giving prominent exposure to this type of inconclusive and confusing studies in the best interest of science.
188
@Shashi Pai
Yes, we are all different so lets just ignore any kind of nutrition recommendations. Forget the food pyramid and recommended diets. Lets just eat whatever we like.
Alternatively, we could get daily lab tests to measure nutrients in blood and other cells to guide us in daily menu choices.
2
@Shashi Pai agreed. anyway, the half-life of truth in biomedicine is about 5 minutes. How many "safe" drugs and surgical procedures once common are no in the dust bin of history? How many hard certain dietary recommendations have been changed, over and over again. And how many MD's working for some drug or herb company is spouting cherry picked nonsense about diet from Sicily or Okinawa while ignoring the lifestyle and lack of stress people in rural areas can have. There are good reasons there has been a general loss of faith in BioMedicine. BioMedicine is a great last resort, but its quite weak as a first resort compared to Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda...
3
@Shashi Pai The point of this study is that anyone eating an above average amount of eggs (say more than one every day) as well as other high cholesterol foods should definitely cut back. Call it an abundance of caution, call it common sense, call it what you will, but CUT BACK.
10
Two critical observations for those of paying attention:
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect." Translation: study is all about correlative and can make no concrete claims about causative.
"She noted that not all people are affected in the same way by dietary cholesterol, and that the relationship between the amount of cholesterol consumed and the amount in the blood is complex and varies from person to person, depending on metabolic and genetic factors."
We went through this egg-scare 25 years ago. At 67, my recent cholesterol numbers are very good. And I eat on average 8 eggs a week (the yolk is my favorite part). I'm not going to stop because of this study. And we're still waiting for that study -- there isn't one as I write -- that makes anything like a plausible relationship between the cholesterol you eat and the cholesterol your body produces.
33
@gking01 You are lucky to have good cholesterol numbers. Most people your age are not so lucky.
1
Everything in moderation, except veggies, fruit, carbs ! I do eat eggs and meat.
4
It makes me angry when I read a study like this. Years ago, my cholesterol level was high. My doctor asked me to take Lipitor and I refused. I started a low carb diet and intentionally ate more eggs (with yolk, of course, one or two per day) and shrimp. Guess what. Within a month, my HDL went up, my LDL and triglyceride went down like magic. Dietary cholesterol is not the problem; carbohydrate, and specifically, processed carb is the problem.
40
@Average Joe
And how is that contradicting the current study ... ?
It isn't (remember, angers tends to make us blind for the truth, rather than be helpful ...).
What this study says is that cardiovascular disease risks go up with every additional egg you eat, WHEN eating the exact same things apart from those eggs.
What you are saying is that a combination of low carb and a bit more eggs increased your good cholesterol. One has nothing to do with the other, you see, as this study didn't measure blood cholesterol levels in the first place.
Conclusion: try to calmly analyze scientific studies rather than getting angry. That will help to see WHAT they have found, and what not ... ;-)
12
@Ana Luisa He probably isn't angry about the study, although it's yet another example of epidemiologists mis-applying their discipline with yet another observational retrospective effort (relying on a single food frequency questionnaire to quantify over a decade of eating habits) and multivariate mumbo-jumbo (that assumes axiomatic knowledge of what constitutes a "healthy diet") to produce statistically weak correlations.
He's more likely angry at the overheated and uncritical reception it will receive in the media, and the inevitable, self-righteous backlash all of us doing some form of LCHF will endure every time one of these studies comes down the pike. There is no moderating the media & popular response to such things...it's exalt, demonize, exalt, demonize meat, eggs, fat, cholesterol, coffee, again & again until the sacred cows come home.
A little perspective: as a readily available food source, eggs predate homo sapiens. Industrialized agriculture and its steady stream of carbohydrates is an evolutionary newcomer, and if you like correlations, its rise tracks very well with the advent of all the diabetes and heart disease and cancer that's killing us. Which one would you suspect of causing harm, a priori?
7
@Ana Luisa
I am very calm, not "angry". Don't worry. When I read this article, I wonder who is funding the research. This is a study of 30k participants over a period of 17 years. This is a multi-Mega $$$ project. You need several generations of researchers to work on this project. NIH, I doubt it a government funding agent would fund a project like this. A lot of details are not given. By the way, the first author Zhong is a postdoc at Northwestern who got his PhD two years ago.
1
I think we are all tired of the unsettled nutrition science that dispute the “goodness” and “badness” of each milligram of food.
I’m sure my comment will be unpopular here but we need a paradigm shift when it comes to food and health. Studies and literature like this only add to the collective obsession and stress that comes from micro-managing our food choices. But do these studies ever account for blood cortisol levels? Do they ever account for income disparities? Do they account for weight stigma? What if heart disease has less to do with food and more to do with the chronic stress and over-work that is embedded in American life?
After years of dieting that turned into an eating disorder that turned into dieting disguised as “eating healthy,” I’m now an intuitive eater. I eat eggs until I don’t want them anymore and then I eat something else. It’s no big deal. I’ve learned to listen to my body’s internal cues, and have ditched the good/bad, junk/health paradigm I was taught to make decisions from.
This article does mention how variable these effects are because—surprise!—every body is different. Genes play a big role. But do we really need to analyze everyone’s individual genes to determine the ideal meal plan? Experts in intuitive eating and Health At Every Size say no. Not when our bodies constantly tell us what we they need. Can we let go of the diet mentality long enough to hear its suggestions?
20
@Kim Sauers
With all respect,that's absurd.
There's no reason why we shouldn't cultivate a passion for the truth, and as a consequence science.
Obviously, on MANY different questions science will always be exploring new things, and as a consequence not have obtained "settled" results yet. The ONLY way to get to those results, however, is to do all those partially inconclusive studies. There is no silver bullet here. So it doesn't make any sense to be "tired" already, long before we had enough data to become able to have real certainty...
As to eating disorders: that's a totally different question ... . The best thing I've ever found on this subject is Julie M. Simon's book "When food is comfort", and her website.
Good luck and take care.
7
@Ana Luisa "With all due respect, that's absurd" is not respectful. People are tired because this advice has been going on for decades and is always changing and contradicting itself. Weren't eggs just taken off of the "do not eat" list not long ago? I certainly saw that and took notice. Now, I may have been consigning myself to an early death. It is certainly a legitimate point to ask whether it makes sense to isolate diet in this way when we are immersed in a total environment that is completely unhealthy.
15
@Kim Sauers Thanks for your comment; I share your weariness with the current mindset that seems to encourage obsessive micromanagement of eating. Your approach is refreshing, and probably frees up large bytes of one's attention, to be directed elsewhere.
2
Long ago I gave up expecting doctors to tell me anything about nutrition. I just follow common sense, and it seems to work well. So, vegetables are healthier than eggs. I eat more vegetables than eggs. Fruit is a better sweet treat than candy. I eat more fruit than candy. Whole grains are better than denatured grains. And so on. Doctors, who seem to make most of their food choices in food courts and at vending machines, aren’t that knowledgeable about nutrition. At this point in the insurance-company-driven landscape of American health care, they are focusing more than ever on their data points, rankings, and algorithms.
24
@Pala Chinta I think it depends on the doctor. Mine's very good and is knowledgeable about food and nutrition. Not that he focuses on that. Mind you, I live in Canada and our health care system is the antithesis of yours (and I have lived in the US, done business there over decades.)
I think your approach makes sense, and in many ways parallels my own, though weight has never been an issue for me. We know that the healthiest diets are the traditional Mediterranean, Japanese/Korean ( especially Okinawa) and they involve sensible things like balance, enjoyment, some moderate indulgence, even on a daily basis. Most North Coast Mediterranean adults consume at least some wine with dinner on a regular if not daily basis, for example.
4
@Pala Chinta
Common sense didn't inform you that vegetables should be consumed in larger amounts than eggs, or that whole grains are healthier than refined grains. You've grown up with those messages, and your parents before you. Scientific research lies behind that messaging, and most physicians are on board with real science. Working long hours and eating at food courts doesn't have anything to do with their competence and commitment to their patients; health.
1
While the study is provocative, it is difficult to interpret due to the complexity of diets, and the emphasis on cholesterol may be misplaced. Egg yolks contain most of the fat of the egg, and therefore fat-soluble compounds that the egg host is exposed to could be found concentrated in the yolk. In our increasingly polluted world, yolk might be expected to contain exogenous hormones, plastics, nanoparticles, synthetic organics, various drugs, etc. that partition into a lipid environment. It may be too early to blame the cholesterol.
10
@RC I wonder if anyone has bothered to do a study as to whether chickens fed organic feed has a different effect on cholesterol levels. Also, free-range chickens, because it's not unreasonable to surmise that a stressed-out chicken will lay a less-healthy egg. (And to those who dismiss such speculation, I remember when nutritionists dismissed organic produce as trendy nonsense.)
4
@Eat organic eggs.
Some comments have already touched on the point that there is no discussion of how high the serum cholesterol count was in the subjects studied -- presumably because asking people what they eat is easier (and less invasive) than checking their blood (which requires fasting for 12 hours).
But without some sense of how much higher the cholesterol levels were in the subjects, not what they ate, the data are pretty meaningless.
Doesn't the Times have informed people vet articles with scientific content?
10
@Steve
That's not a valid counter-argument.
This is, as the NYT explicitly writes, an epidemiological study.
That means that it looks for STATISTICAL CORRELATIONS between cardiovascular diseases, and the overall daily cholesterol intake.
And it turns out that there is such a statistically significant correlation between eating eggs and higher heart disease risk.
You can't refute such a study by remembering that it doesn't study OTHER aspects of cardiovascular disease risks. You can only refute it by READING it, and finding one or the other methodological error, or by doing a similar experiment yourself and having a different outcome.
And of course statistical correlation isn't "meaningless" ...
What is meaningless is blaming the Times for writing news reports that inform us of new studies ... ;-)
23
@Ana Luisa
...but correlation is not causation...that something is correlated in an epidemiological study does not mean there is causative value. Two things may have a relationship but it does not mean one necessarily has a direct causative effect on the other.
2
@Ana Luisa To find a statistical correlation between two things in a study involving 30,000 people points to confirmation bias. And the use of "of course" before a statement doesn't prove the statement.
1
Let's not forget that the first shocking study that came out in the 1960s showing for the first time that eggs were bad for our health, was paid for by breakfast cereal manufacturers, who wanted people to eat their products (refined carbohydrates and sugar) instead of eggs, for breakfast.
That famous study was conducted with powdered egg yolks, not whole eggs. The whole thing is a fiasco and the poster child for the American profit-driven system. That first study was not good science, and neither is this one. So many variables overlooked.
I say eat whole foods, as close to nature as possible. My mother always said 'eggs are the perfect food.' I believe her.
18
DNA testing may become more integrated and refined with blood testing for maladies such as markers for heart disease and other diseases causing premature death. Imagine isolating genetic background with a green light/red light system that points to food groups you can safely eat.
For now, some people can eat lots of eggs and live to be 100. Not everyone knows if they have the genetic background to allow that. For now, food groups are a lot like mob families, you don't know when there is unrest and someone is about to get whacked.
9
I'll eat my eggs daily from my happy chickens (they gave me 3 brown and one green today!) and if I die early, so be it. Let it be said that they and I both lived happy lives -- each enriched by the other.
94
@Observer
Me too! Get mine from a local homesteader who has year round layers. Great food in so many ways. They can carry freight like onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc to make a delicious and varied meal anytime of the day.
6
Eggs a not good for you and then they are and now they aren't again. Moderate alcohol consumption is good for you and then it isn't until it is good for you again. Coffee is no good for you and then it is very good for you. Sodium is no good and then it is. And, don't forget opioids are safe not really addictive and a first line treatment for all kinds of pain. And, scientists and doctors wonder why people don't believe them on vaccinations. And, why there are climate change deniers.
36
@JAF
On many questions, science isn't settled yet.
On others, it is.
All you need to know to understand when it is, is to read scientific papers.
Once you do, you cannot but notice that on many nutrients science isn't settled yet at all, and different approaches to the same question lead to different scientific results.
Once you do, you also cannot but notice that when it comes to vaccinations and climate change, a lot of the obtained results have been confirmed SO many times, by SO many different studies all over the planet and for decades already, that it's safe to say that we can talk about settled science.
The bottom line here is to not start confounding BELIEVING and scientific truth.
Scientific truth doesn't require any believing at all, as it has been proven to be true.
But before obtaining a proven truth, you need LOTS of different studies. On eggs, alcohol, coffee etc. we don't have any conclusive studies yet. So each study is valid, but only from the point of view of its own methodology, whereas different methodologies are still being explored, you see? Whereas global warming has been proven by ALL methodologies used, and for decades already.
So the only reason why there are climate change deniers is because those people know that science education isn't perfect in the US, so you can easily manipulate people and tell them that settled science isn't settled ..
34
@Ana Luisa The comment was not about vaccinations or climate change, it was about diet. Science has not covered itself with glory when it comes to diet. Perhaps it should focus on other things it does better. I am glad to see someone with so much faith in the scientific method but you cannot deny that diet "science" has discredited itself through its own repeated pronouncements about "truth," which it then repeatedly contradicts.
7
@Elizabeth
It's not so much science, where interpretations of results are usually nuanced and quite conservative; rather Popular Nutrition venues where extremism and oversimplification - spiced up with large helpings of conspiracy theories - reign.
This article attempts address the issue of egg quantity and fails to reach anything resembling a conclusion. But what about quality? Are the GMO/antibiotic fed factory henhouse eggs no different than those produced at a farm where the chickens are pastured? What about a comparison between locally produced eggs eaten within 3-4 days of laying and supermarket eggs that are weeks old?
The USDA visited Joel Salatin's farm (if you are interested in regenerative agriculture or in healthy food, check him out--he's arguably America's "first farmer"). Testing his eggs for nutritional content delivered the following results:
21X MORE OMEGA-3
7X MORE VITAMIN E
1.5X MORE VITAMIN A
7.5X MORE BETA CAROTENE
217X MORE FOLATE
30% LESS CHOLESTEROL
25X LESS SATURATED FAT
These results were obtained by comparing Salatin's eggs to the USDA standard.
If articles like these are to be taken seriously, we need to stop pretending that factory food and real food are equivalent.
74
@bobg
That's a relevant remark, but you can't reject this study without reading it ...
I didn't read it either, but as access to organic food is still very limited in the US, I suppose most participants in this study ate non-organic eggs, so we'll have to suppose that you can eat a bit more organic eggs a week before you get a 6% health risk increase.
2
@bobg
Excellent observation! Nutrient dense food, produced as Nature intended, is a whole different animal. Beef, pork, and other animal meats, when raised on pasture are vastly different in their nutrient quality than the factory produced items we conventionally call 'food.'
10
No mention in the study about where these eggs are from. Eggs from pasture raised hens are very different in composition from factory raised hens. Truly pasture raised hens (not "free-range", a label which often only means chickens sharing a big cage instead of being in individual ones) eat a diverse diet of plants, arthropods, worms, and even soil (loaded with a diverse ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, etc) in addition to the standard chicken feed. Additionally, they have sunlight and fresh air. Their eggs reflect the quality of feed and environment. I'd be very interested in a study comparing health effects of eating factory eggs vs true farm eggs...and until then, my family will continue to enjoy copious quantities of eggs from our homestead flock.
43
I've been eating two eggs a day for years and guess what? I'm still alive at 72 with no heart disease. Contrary to the statin salesmen, I have choesterol of about 280 (as of about three years ago. Guess what, I'm still alive and kicking. A study I recently read about studied hypercholesterolemics and guess what, they live longer than hypocholersterolemics. The sugar industry, it turns out, bribed some Harvard scientists to help blame heart disease on saturated fat instead of sugar. What surprised me the most was that they were bought for a mere $50K in today's dollars. The corruption in the medical industry is of epic proportions, including the paid for FDA and CDC.
25
A year or two ago, a woman in Italy died at the age of 117. She ate three eggs plus raw beef every day.
22
@Anne
Link?
And I hope you are aware of the fact that epidemiology measures PROBABILITIES, not 100% guaranteed in ALL cases outcomes?
1
@Anne And Kirk Douglas was a heavy smoker who's now 102. What does that prove?
1
Kirk Douglas had a pretty debilitating stroke. Not all people would opt for that. But more power to him.
"Each additional half-egg a day was associated with a 6 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease and an 8 percent increased risk of early death."
...and...
"But we don’t want people to walk away thinking they shouldn’t eat any eggs. That’s not the right message."
Wait, run that by me again?
20
@Clotario
It means that if you eat one egg a day, you'll probably increase your heart disease risk by 6%.
That means that eating two eggs twice a week, or half an egg a day, does NOT increase your heart disease risk at all. And as eggs contain lots of good things too (proteins, vitamins, minerals), it's not a good idea to all of a sudden start eating no eggs at all, as the study does NOT show that eating no eggs is better than eating two eggs twice a week.
4
.
@Clotario, eat only the whites. I hard boil eggs & do that.
My cholesterol #'s are good at dozen egg whites / day
.
@Clotario
It means the author of the study, the USDA, wants you to eat more of everything that agribusiness produces: Eggs, beef, chicken, pork, you name it.
3
Here we go again with the eggs. My cholesterol was high. Instead of taking meds for this, I went on a ketogenic diet. This meant a huge increase in dietary cholesterol and saturated fats (including 2-4 eggs per day), while eating negligible carbohydrates. My cholesterol levels plummeted. If you're interested in the science, look up "cholesterol conundrum" on YouTube. Turns out, even LDLs are not bad. The only bad ones are the sd-LDLs (LDLs corrupted by the process of metabolizing excess carbs). Suffice to say, this is one of those areas where the truth is not particularly intuitive.
12
@Arturo al Dente
That's not a valid argument.
That your overall cholesterol levels plummeted can very well be explained by an overall DECREASE in saturated fats and sugar intake (as sugars are turned into fats when not used immediately).
You also have to take into account whether other cholesterol increasing factors changed or not (exercising, stress, social connection, drinking, smoking, ...).
So the overall conclusion might still be that a vegetarian diet, for instance, is healthier than a ketogenic diet, you see?
3
@Ana Luisa
I second @Arturo al Dente. I too had high cholesterol. I started a low carb diet and consumed a lot of eggs with yolk and shrimp. Within a month, my HDL went up and my LDL and triglyceride went down. The problem is with simple carb, not dietary cholesterol.
9
@Ana Luisa The ketogenic diet is not low in saturated fat (and the author of the post specifically said his saturated fat intake rose). Your point about sugar is completely unclear -- sugar intake is very restricted on a keto diet, as it is limited to about 30 gms of carbs a day. So if your point is that restricting sugar could lower cholesterol, wouldn't it make sense to compare the relative impacts of sugar consumption vis a vis eggs? And taking into account "other factors" would be important for the egg study as well.
2
They used to say how bad eggs were for you. Then they said they weren’t. NOW THEY ARE!
I’ll continue my 2-4 eggs(in food and recipes)a week, and wait to see what they say next year.
11
@Lisa
What they say is that 4 eggs a weak doesn't increase your heart disease risk at all. It's 7 eggs a week that does.
So what they're saying is that egg eaters are no more likely to die of a heart attack than average, but since they are asserting that egg eaters otherwise have healthier diets than average, they "correct" the data so that eggs are bad. But the "correction" itself is based on the idea that they know what is healthy in the first place and what people actually eat. In my world most people who eat eggs also eat sausage or bacon and waffles or pancakes slathered in butter and syrup. And there's all the eggs in cookies, cakes and danish, etc. It'll take a lot of soft-boiled egg and dry toast eaters to make up for this huge group. And a lot of healthy eaters avoid eggs. Note that Costco sells egg substitute. I can believe that brussels sprouts eaters have healthier than average diets, but egg eaters? That's a stretch.
3
@roseberry
The study doesn't measure the impact of eating eggs among "egg eaters", but among people who eat the exact same thing, whereas one group adds eggs to their diet (in whatever form), and the other not.
"Correction" in a scientific study doesn't mean that the results are manipulated in such a way that the outcome better confirms the scientists' own subjective opinions or hypothesis.
"Correction" means that you actively eliminate the possibility that other factors than the one that your studying might have an impact on the outcome, so that the results of the study don't allow you to know whether it was the factor you wanted to study or one of the others that caused that outcome, you see?
Finally, the only way to understand the results of a scientific study is to read the article VERY carefully.
In this case, for instance, the results to NOT show that "egg eaters have healthier than average diets" (THAT result came from another study, which studied exactly that question). What THIS study shows is that among people with the EXACT SAME diet except for eating eggs or not, those eating eggs have a 6% higher risk of heart disease per additional half-egg.
That OTHER study showed that what you spontaneously associate with "egg eaters" (= people with a less healthy diet than average) is wrong. To know why, you have to read it... ;-)
9
@Ana Luisa The article clearly says they analyzed several studies involving only participant surveys of what they ate. There were not groups of people whose diet was under any control. It's almost impossible to make people eat a controlled diet for even a few days, let alone the years it takes to get to an actual health outcome like heart disease. Using any proxy outcome like cholesterol isn't valid because cholesterol isn't one thing, it's many things and the exact role of each type in heart disease isn't understood.
4
@roseberry
From the article:
“This study takes into account the general quality of the diet and adjusts for it,” said Norrina B. Allen, the lead author of the new study and an associate professor of epidemiology at Northwestern. “We really were focused on the independent effects of eggs and dietary cholesterol."
So contrary to what you assume, and corresponding to standard scientific requirements, the results of this article have to do with the difference made by eggs and dietary foods only.
And it's actually quite difficult to do so, you know. It means that you only select people who have more or less the same way of eating, apart from how many eggs they eat ...
And of course cholesterol is cholesterol. So if you take an egg, you can perfectly measure how much cholesterol it contains, on average.
That many different factors influence heart disease doesn't invalidate this study at all, quite on the contrary: to know what those different factors are, there have been many studies like this already, with each one isolating ONE risk factor to study it independently over time.
Finally, this is a statistical correlations study, NOT a causal relations study. So it does not study the exact ROLE (in the sense of how cholesterol concretely impacts heart disease) of cholesterol. But that doesn't mean that statistical correlations can be rejected ...
The book of Psalms, completed some 2500 years ago, states in ( 90:10 ) " Our days come to 70 years, or 80, if our strength endures". All our concern about our heath, what to eat and what medical procedures to endure, has accomplished little in lengthening our life spans, once we become adults. So eat all the eggs you want.
6
@Aaron Adams
In real life, we have DOUBLED our life expectancy, remember?
So of course better healthcare and better information about what is healthy and what isn't makes a huge difference ...
3
@Ana Luisa:
In actuality, the biggest reason for our greater life expectancy has resulted from improvements in sanitation, cleaner water, and improved nutrition. The better healthcare applies only to emergency medicine. The modern healthcare system has no clue of how to treat chronic illness.
11
@Dan
That might be possible. It still refutes Aaron Adams' idea that life expectancy remained the same though ... ;-)
By the way, the Bible says that at the time, people COULD become 80-years old, IF their "strength endures". It doesn't mention at all whether the average life expectancy is 70 years or not. So IF the author(s) of the Psalms would have had access to epidemiological studies at the time (or if God would have had access to them, and then transmitted his info to the authors), he's clearly NOT claiming that 2,500 years ago, life expectancy was the same as it is today in the West ... contrary to Aaron's interpretation of this Bible passage ...
2
I eat three everyday and I have for 60 years. My cholesterol is normal. one study is not going to change how I eat.
14
Ok, so half an egg a day can increase my risk of heart disease by 6%? That last does not sound too good for me. Of course, whenever we speak of an increase (or decrease) by a percent we actually need a base number, i.e., increase or decrease by 6% over what? If my non-egg risk is 1%, then my half-egg a day eating risk would be 1.06% (I might not change my diet at all). However if my risk is, say 40%, then my egg eating habit makes my risk 42.42% (still might not give up my 1/2 egg a day habit). If my base risk is 80%, I've got other problems than my beloved eggs...
I'll continue to eat the occasional egg I eat now and wait for the next installment of "As the Egg Turns."
44
This conflict over the impact of cholesterol in general and eggs in particular is a rather good example of why there is rarely such a thing as “settled science.” The same applies to other disciplines including, but not limited to, climate science.
4
@Thomas Smith There is far more concrete "hard" data associated with climate change than studies associated with nutrition.
19
@Thomas Smith
Nutrition research is unusually difficult because people at times:
forget, underestimate, tell researchers what they think what they want to hear, project optimum scenarios etc.
10
@Thomas Smith
What is "settled science" and what isn't is specific to each scientific discipline.
You can't use a specific epidemiological question, as studied in statistical analyses of polls, to somehow claim that a totally different scientific question, in the same or in a different scientific discipline, isn't settled yet either, remember?
If not you could claim that because there is no definitively proven conclusion on the health impact of egg yolks on humans yet, we shouldn't get any cancer treatment anymore once we've been diagnosed with a type of cancer that today has been proven to be entirely curable.
So your reasoning doesn't make any sense, you see? If taken seriously, it would only lead to irrational behavior.
One problem with this is that it doesn't say much about what people eat if they don't eat eggs.
Previous guidance to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol often led people to eat refined carbohydrates that were, on a calorie-for-calorie basis, more harmful to the heart than the foods they replaced.
And then, of course, there's the old bugaboo -- just what do these observational studies actually mean?
The nutrition field is riddled with contradictory studies of this kind.
What we really need to settle these issues are controlled prospective studies -- and as Dr. Allen implied, studies that tell us how *individuals* react to various foods.
11
My conclusions given all of the exasperatingly contradictory messaging:
Food (period) is injurious to the cellular self.
Cells, however, require the nutrients locked in food to function.
Thus, one should seek to extract the great majority of ones nutrients from sources that are the most nutrient dense but least offensive to said cells (e.g, plants), and only as needed.
Else, fast.
7
@Qev yes. Caloric Restriction does work and is very difficult to achieve over the long haul. There have been long term studies done on monkeys.
1
As I read this story, I'm reminded of a very old joke: I've read that grilling causes cancer, I also read that bacon causes cancer, I also read that red meat causes cancer. So I gave up reading.
As my nurse practitioner and cardiologist say, everything in moderation.
45
"The study has limitations. The data depended on self-reports about what people ate, which are not always reliable, and the analyzed studies used varying methods for collecting the diet information."
Self-reported diets are the least reliable. Few participants report all their items of intake. In fact, they tend to purposely leave out "junk foods" or those foods they believe are unhealthy, that might not be, etc.
As a former Personal Trainer (300+ clients over time) I always had my clients log their regular diets, not their self-prescribed diets. Requested intermittent 4 week log of their general intake of food. I found that of 10 clients, only 2-3 were very honest. So after asking them questions, in a casual, non-probing way, determined most were editing their reports. Missing the snacks, missing the double meals (bagged lunch, followed by the office bought lunch) the happy hour indulgences, etc, etc.
I'm a firm believer that its not the eggs, or any of the alleged whole foods with "bad" aspects (avocados, etc) but its more the ingredients from the heavily processed side of the Standard American Diet (SAD) that is at the heart of the decreased heart health of so many Americans. Compounded by the propensity of the population to go on calorie and nutrient deficient diets, over and over, that wreaks havoc on the metabolism and the body's hormone regulation system.
I just don't buy that a diet mostly of whole foods, eaten in moderation, are causing our health issues.
30
Just what we all need... more confusion.
Another "more" conclusive, but not definitively conclusive food analysis study about eggs. My Internist said eating eggs every day was absolutely fine based on all the latest research. In fact, he said if he were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one food, he would choose the egg because of its nutritional content.
I am a healthy, fit adult man with no family history of cardiovascular disease. Am I really at an 18 percent increased risk of premature death from "any" cause because I eat eggs every morning?
I guess I'll have to wait for the next newer new analysis to see which way the proverbial scientific data winds are blowing.
18
If your internist is wrong, will you sue him? This is malpractice.
1
Without seeing more details of the study, which is actually a study and correlation of other studies, not original research, it seems they studied cholesterol period, and it is the media that is extrapolating that to focus on eggs, instead of, for example, cheese, butter, olives, etc. Eggs contain lecithin, which neutralizes bad cholesterol, so just counting up quantities of cholesterol alone is meaningless. Only an egg-specific study could provide legitimate results.
24
In order for the lecithin to be available, the egg yolk must be runny. Hard egg yolks don’t contain lecithin.
I thought egg yolks contain "good cholesterol", whereas red meat contains "bad cholesterol", and that you need the good version in order to lower the bad ones?
How can a study evaluate the effect of egg yolks on heart diseases without mentioning HDL and LDL .. ?
13
@Ana Luisa
...Or triglycerides. Or how hormones respond to diet.
All these studies, and I don't think you can look at one food, or one component of one food, and figure out anything.
1
@MCD
I'm not claiming that it's impossible the measure the impact of one type of food on overall health.
You can, of course (at least to a certain degree). All you need to do is to use a sample of people who have similar habits when it comes to all other known risk factors for a certain disease.
I'm just wondering why this study is analyzing "cholesterol in the diet" in general, rather than making a distinction between HDL and LDL.
Foods don’t contain good or bad cholesterol. Just cholesterol. It is how the cholesterol from your diet or made intrinsically by your body is processed, transported around the body, and metabolized that makes it “good” or “bad.”
1
I don't think I can read any more articles like this. There have been contradictory reports on eggs, coffee, wine, etc. for so long now, that there just doesn't seem to be a true consensus on anything. I think what I will do is enjoy the things I like, in relative moderation, combine that with some exercise, meditation, laughter, and the enjoyment of time with my wife and friends, and hope for the best.
302
Today, you win the internet.
5
An interesting report on the down side of egg consumption. Especially my favorite part.The yolk. Life involves trade offs. I will continue to enjoy soft boiled eggs and sunny side up for breakfast. There is more to life than a quest for longevity. A balance between regular exercise and pleasurable egg centered breakfasts is my formula for a healthy long life.
44
we have no idea how they adjusted for what else the study participants were eating. I really regret that this is a headliner. We have known for some time that how we regulate insulin in the body has an effect on CVD that may be greater than cholesterol consumption.
You cannot hang an article on this with observational data. you need to state that up front. Most people will not understand how to critically analyze a study... and I certainly cannot when the article is not available to a wider audience yet.
26
I wonder if the effect of cooking eggs in butter was accounted for.
5
"...with each additional 300 milligrams a day of cholesterol in the diet, there was a 17 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease and an 18 percent increased risk of premature death..."
"Eggs alone had the same more-is-worse effect... even a half-egg a day makes a difference."
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect... The data depended on self-reports about what people ate, which are not always reliable..."
"There are many other risk factors for heart disease besides diet, and the numbers the authors cite indicate the percentage of additional risk from a high-cholesterol diet, so the effect is not striking."
"the Scientific Report that accompanies those same guidelines says that cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption,” suggesting that avoiding eggs is not important.
These quotes are all from the same article, so is it any wonder that some people question the efficacy and safety of vaccines or wonder if climate change is real? People are told "science is science", "facts are facts" but the interpretation of those scientific facts can vary wildly and often create more confusion than certainty.
9
@S Jones, I noticed the same things. The article undermines the findings of the study to the point I can't tell whether the study was properly conducted and, if it was, whether the article drew the proper conclusions. That makes it pretty easy to ignore the whole thing, which I intend to do, first thing tomorrow morning.
7
@S Jones
Imho you're confounding the fact that a specific scientific question is still being studied, and the fact that the results of a specific scientific investigation all confirm the same hypothesis.
There is nothing inherently contradictory in your quotes. They're simply quoting different scientific studies, and when it comes to egg yolks, there is clearly no "settled" science yet, the investigation is still ungoing.
On many other scientific questions, we do have a "settled" result already.
We know, for instance, with 100% certainty how a computer works and how to make you and I communicate without having to meet in person. Similarly, we know with 100% certainty that global warming is happening.
Conclusion: as citizens, we do have to read studies about a specific question to know whether on THAT question, science has already definitively proven something or not. As scientific activity will never stop, there will ALWAYS be many questions still under investigation and with no conclusive results yet, but that doesn't mean that other things would in the meanwhile not have been proven yet either.
3
@Ana Luisa
Hi Ana - I certainly agree with your assessment of global warming and that science can know many things with virtual 100% certainty. I’m also saying that I can understand how some people feel that science and scientists have been so co-opted by industry and commercial interests, that their default mode, sadly, is to distrust them. This is especially true in the area of human health and safety as well as nutrition. It’s one thing for science to discover certain facts that prompt a given scientist to change her mind and her findings. It’s another thing completely to have science fudge facts to cater to egg boards, milk panels, ranchers, all coming up with “facts” that happen to suit that industry. The 20th Century saw dozens of studies that proved smoking was safe, for example, and that there was no correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Dozens of drugs were said to be totally safe that clearly were not. This is still going on. We know it.
You’re right, people are required to read an assess for themselves but many fear that science has been so compromised by dubious and even fraudulent findings that they have turned it off. Theirs may not be a fair verdict but it’s a common one. And science must take some of the blame for this distrust - for so often selling out to the highest bidder.
3
Another contradictory story/study based on observational data. My experience is exactly the opposite, albeit also anecdotal. A few years ago as part of my gym's overall wellness/fitness challenge, we did a 6 week food challenge. I ate 2-4 eggs every single day for 6 weeks (among other things), far more than I had previously, and my blood test samples were remarkably good: simply put, my bad cholesterol levels went way down, my good cholesterol levels went way up, and my triglyceride levels also improved dramatically. In just 6 weeks. While increasing egg consumption a lot. So there we go, back on the merry-go-round.
21
@Kevin K I am glad you wrote this comment. I eat eggs everyday, they are organic eggs from chickens who get outdoors time to scratch around and eat bugs and buds and lots of stuff. they get sunlight .They are not given antibiotics. they have their own real nests as far as I know.
Have you ever seen factory chickens so crowded who do not ever see daylight and do not have nests? They are pretty much bald, their feathers have dropped off. Go to YouTube and see one of the videos about people who have adopted factory chickens and how sad they look and can barely walk and how confused they are being let out to walk in the grass and how they are naked with out their feathers which they lost due to non healthy feed. Including soy which was never meant to be a food. Their eggs must be poison. So this vague study does not take into account which kind of eggs were eaten either. Go and see these videos about the rescued chickens and they show them a year later with beautiful feathers all perky and happy and bright eyed and they have their own nests and are out of doors in lush grass most the time. It breaks your heart than anyone is so cruel to chickens just to make a bigger profit while possibly destroying the health of the consumer.
4
@Kevin K
That's not a valid objection, as you admit that you also changed other things in your lifestyle/diet ...
Obviously eating eggs is ill-advised for some people while being nothing to consider at all in other people.
We may all be one species but all of our ancestors bred for thousands of years in specific areas without ever realizing that there were other people living just on the other side of the mountains. Actually, when you think about it, the last thing that any 'pure blood' has is a bragging right about being a 'pure blood' because all 'pure blood' means is that person is bragging about being inbred and their DNA strands is swimming with broken patterns.
I can eat eggs and my blood work comes back normal. I can eat sheep and goat products and continue about my day. Cows milk and products will get me every time. I love meals made from prepared dried legumes, but I won't eat one Chestnut or Almond or Walnut because all of those will also give me stomach cramps and diarrhea. I have no problem eating any kind of actual bread but my closest friend could not tolerate gluten at all because the effect was a diaster on her Crohn's Disease.
The last sentence of the author of this article should have been the first. It should have read "Some interesting dietary studies have recently been published in Jama but Dr. Allen reminds us: d"despite its strengths, future studies are needed to understand why we are getting conflicting findings across populations and whether there are some people for who eating XXX is bad while other remain unaffected."
11
Okay eggs are bad for you this week. So we are all supposed to switch to oatmeal. What's the latest word on coffee? I have seen so many of these so-called scientific studies through more then 6 decades I can't keep up. My mother was 93 when she passed and her grandfather was 96. We eat eggs!
34
@Pat
Just wait, next week there will be a contradictory study......
I recently started polling friends, neighbors, (anyone else I can corner) about what they make for dinner and how they do it five nights a week. I thought it would help me expand my repertoire. The results weren't very pretty. Taking those answers into account, I seriously doubt anyone has the time to cook eggs for breakfast very often and certainly not every day, making the whole egg thing a non-issue.
As for oatmeal? To my husband's everlasting embarrassment I have torn apart every cereal aisle of every grocery store in our small, upper middle-class city in my quest for instant oatmeal that does not contain either sugar or flax seed. Result - there are none. NONE. There were two, maybe three long-cooking oatmeals that were free of both sugar and flax seed. And there was also cream of wheat.
My conclusion - the more important study is one which addresses the effects of marketing and food fads such as flax seed, gluten-free, et., and how those factors limit what foods are even produced by manufacturers, further limiting the availability of simple, undoctored, real foods at any it price point.
2
@seattlesweetheart
I might have the answer to your oatmeal search. I just pulled mine out of our cupboard and it's Quaker Oats Quick 1 Minute. It says on the label Ingredients. Whole Grain Rolled Oats, nothing else. Just microwave on High 1/2 cup Oats in 1 cup milk or water for 1-1/2 to 2 minutes. I usually use less water and top with honey and cinnamon. Hope this helps.
4
@Pat
Uh ... what's your point, actually?
Yes, scientific medical studies only exists for about a century. So in 100 years, there are still a LOT of questions where the investigation is ongoing.
In science, an ongoing investigations means that about question X, we do NOT have "settled science" yet. It means we can expect years/decades more of studies, without obtaining conclusive results. That doesn't mean that in the meanwhile, the obtained results aren't scientific. It only means that they only tell part of the story, and that we have no proof of the entire story yet.
Finally, knowing someone who did something that has been proven to be bad for your health, and who became more than 90-years old, can NEVER refute studies showing that it's bad, because those studies indicate PROBABILITIES.
Eating one egg a day, for instance, according to this study here increases your RISK of a heart disease by 6%. That means that many people will eat two eggs a day and not die of heart disease at all, you see? It's just that IF you already have other important heart disease risk factors (e.g. you smoke, don't exercise, eat no fruits nor vegetables, are socially isolated, etc.), then it's better to eat less than one egg a day, because if not, you MIGHT increase your risk of heart disease even more.
As I don't smoke, eat lots of vegetables/fruits, exercise regularly, don't eat red meat, etc., after reading this study I decided to continue eating 2 eggs a day. But at least I know.. ;-)
3
In my lifetime eggs were good (as a child). Then they were bad (early adulthood and later). Then they were good again. Now they are bad. Realizing that I have brought this argument down to the bare basics without detail and nuance, and that there is more to learn, I'm just going to continue on. I'm having eggs for dinner because the carton in my refrigerator is past its sell by date. Moderation is key to most any dietary decision - and probably doesn't hurt to look at the latest miracle diets with some skepticism.
16
@Jean Reilly
Your post is a perfect example of how the readers, how the public poorly interprets these articles.
The piece didn't say "eggs were bad," but a catalyst for a rise in risks. A potential one.
Why do readers, the public in general always apply the word "bad" to foods, etc, when studies say a food item can, or might increase risks?
Driving a car isn't bad, but it sure does increase ones risk of dying, or being seriously hurt in a car accident. Yet we never say driving is "bad", in the way we label foods.
When it comes to foods, Americans are so swift to add "bad" to them when any mention of an increased risk is reported.
Why? Because most Americans seek a perfect diet, for a perfect life, and perfect health. Not wanting to do the slightly hard work of finding out what works best for them, and that the best can change over time.
Americans demand convenience and ease, and apathy, when it comes to food and their nutritional needs. Figuring it out for their needs, is just too hard. Appearing to be impossible for so many people.
7
It's not perfection people expect. It's rather that an article that purports to describe grounds for judging that eating more eggs increases the risk of CVD and mortality actually doesn't give you any information about how you can judge whether and how many eggs you should eat without dangerously raising your level of risk. We know that driving entails risk, but we know lots of ways to reduce that risk. This article and apparently this study do not help us.
2
For decades, I did not even buy butter, bacon, Italian-type dry sausage, cooked ham, liverwurst, nor any of these "bad things", and very few eggs. From age 60 to age 72, I had a complete annual checkup: my cholesterol was always around 200, but it was mostly "good" cholesterol, I was told.
At age 72, I moved to another township; my doctor stayed put. After that, I was too busy gardening to drive nine miles just to have him check my blood-pressure, cholesterol, etc. , Twelve years later, I am still alive and well and I also started eating all these "bad things" again. I like eggs, and ham, and liverwurst, and butter (on bread with honey on top). Don't you?
18
@Fran
Go, girl, go!
1
I eat 6 eggs a day and have a very healthy lifestyle and normal cholesterol numbers in my bloodstream. I hope nutrition science can improve from its current form of epidemiological studies of associations and rather conducts some randomized controlled double blind experiments like real functioning sciences.
10
@Peter
That your RISK of heart disease (NOT cholesterol numbers in your bloodstream) increases by eating 6 eggs a day doesn't mean that you WILL die, like most Americans, from a cardiovascular disease, only that it becomes more likely ...
And studies about statistical correlations ARE relevant. You just shouldn't conclude from it what they do not prove ...
@Peter, six sounds like a lot of eggs!
1
@Peter. A multitude of studies support your contention. A recent one for example says: "Among adults with type 2 diabetes or impaired fasting glucose (T2D/IFG), there was no consistent association between dietary cholesterol intake and fasting low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), LDL/HDL ratio, or triglycerides over 20 years of follow-up. In longitudinal analyses, the adjusted hazard ratio for CVD in the highest (vs. lowest) sex-specific tertile of cholesterol intake was 0.61 (95% CI: 0.41, 0.90). These analyses provide no evidence of an adverse association between dietary cholesterol and serum lipid levels or atherosclerotic CVD risk among adults with prevalent IFG/T2DM." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29903989
I eat only one egg daily. I also use a spoon to take out about 1/3 or 50% of the yolk. My cholesterol level which my doctor monitors about two or three times a year in always about 175 or less. Three years ago I had a heart attack for eating too many clams and clam sauce loaded with sodium. I am alive perhaps because my arteries and not clogged up with cholesterol.
4
people don't want to believe that diet matters, or rather than diets are not all equal. People go on diets designed to increase ketosis, but don't want to believe that it's not healthy. I know someone who died from being on such a diet.
Cholesterol was shown to be associated with heart disease long ago before I went to college, but now people don't want to believe it. Maybe the egg board did some arm twisting at the FDA. We keep coming back to the same conclusions about diet, but people don't want to believe it, so they have to be repeated and repeated. NY Times often contributes to the misinformation about diet, and often treats the field of nutrition with cynicism. At least this time, they're giving credit to clear findings. Such strong associations mean something.
4
@mirucha
I'm sorry mirucha but more often than not the studies done 25, 50, years ago are often flawed. This will be the ongoing process until we truly understand the human body's norm and that is a very long way off. Everything from climate, to age, to income, to genetics, to stress, to type of stress, to amount of sleep, to education, to unsuccessful pregnancy and successful pregnancy, previous injuries, and onward, can and do effect studies.
When an institution, such as a medical college/hospital, is planning a study they have already concluded what question the study is going to ask and they already suspect a correlation. A general call goes out for volunteers who meet the criteria. I know this because it was a small part of my career.
For example: my mother was the oldest living myloemingingnescele spina bifida patient in the USA and probably the world when she died. She had wanted to leave her body to medical science. She thought they could learn so much. Nobody wanted it. Why? Because she had survived until 76, but had also had 32 different surgeries throughout her life and her medical record of her home birth from the dr. who amputated her spinal cord read : baby expected to die before morning.
Medical studies need to have disclaimers. They should all say something like : If you think your car is low on gas you should probably stop and get more gas.
3
@mirucha
Your statements are a poor reading of the data of the last sixty years. Cholesterol (LDL vs HDL) are an indicator of cardiovascular health but there is very little connection between dietary cholesterol intake and serum cholesterol. The liver will compensate for whatever you eat or don't eat. A hard-boiled egg has virtually no effect on cholesterol levels. This has been shown in the scientific and medical literature since the 1950s up to the present time.
There is a connection between dietary triglycerides intake and serum triglycerides. Consumed fatty acids will find there way into serum triglycerides because the liver will not compensate for its consumption. So, an egg fried in butter or oil will have some impact on serum triglycerides.
As I learned in medical school, there are only a few ways to lower cholesterol: limit carbohydrates which does lead to increased cholesterol production by the liver; increase aerobic exercise; take cholesterol lowering medications.
A hard-boiled egg a day (with the yolk) is one of the healthiest food options available. It has almost no fat, a small amount of complex carbohydrates, a lot of protein, it's filling and prevents overeating throughout the day. Few food items offer so many health benefits.
Unfortunately, articles like these only obfuscate matters.
15
@Arif
No, articles like this don't "obfuscate matters", they show that previous studies might not have been entirely true and that we need more scientific research ...
You can't use the fact that previous studies had different outcomes to just discard this one, you have to show WHERE this one made a mistake and why, before you can rationally discard it ...
If you're not going to eat that, may I please have your piece of frittata?
17
@wbj Sorry.. but I love my frittata, I'm going to eat it with a nice glass of Chianti.
11
I will save you a slice of my tortilla Española:)
I can't wait to see Zoe Harcombe's take on this. Could it be that this study is another whack job aimed at the LCHF/keto community, which is using diet to reverse type II diabetes, which is ACTUALLY a risk factor for CVD, unlike LDL? I'd love to know what sort of risk this study is citing, too - relative/absolute, and what does it mean in actual numbers? Not that it would even matter in an observational study involving self-reported intake, which is probably of worthless statistical or predictive value.
3
If you believed that if you could live forever if you ate only rocks, how many of you would do it?
11
@Beppo
There would be numerous articles in the Times Food Section on new and different ways to cook rocks - how they do it in the South of France - what wines go best with different rocks - the latest "Rockery" on SoHo or Brooklyn - great new ideas for using those leftover rocks -- and -- of course - how and where to buy locally sources and organic rocks -
I prefer mine raw - you know - Sushi Rocks...
7
@Howard G
Rocks that are found in grassy fields will be much more expensive than desert rocks (and more nutritious!)
And someone will make a fortune developing gluten free rocks.
1
I give money every year to the charity Heifer to provide chicken and ducks to families. so that they can have eggs for their own nutrition and to sell to others for money so that their children may go to school to become literate. This is all very relative.
I hear starving to death is very painful.
36
@Daisy22
Never heard of that charity. I'll be looking it up
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect."
Why would you be reporting on it then? Report on it when there is a cause and effect relationship established.
NY Times has so many articles like these, maybe you should hire a science writer who knows the difference between observational studies and randomized controlled clinical trials. The only point of an observational study is to identify some correlations, which can then be the basis for a RCT that are double-blind and have control groups and placebos and all that stuff that CAN establish cause and effect. The media needs to stop reporting correlations as if they're established conclusions.
48
@Shwirtz
Here's why the NYT writes about this.
Epidemiology is a scientific discipline that investigates statistical correlations.
Knowing those correlations is important, especially in the absence of causal relation studies, because it allows us to at least already have a first idea of what can be proven today.
As to clinical trials (= concerning drugs): those ONLY indicated statistical correlation too, NOT causal relations, remember?
Conclusion: imho you confound casual relations and statistical correlations, and then you wrongly imagine that scientific studies about statistical correlations aren't scientific at all ...
Duh - eggs are clearly not good for you. And, any good that comes in eggs can be found in plant-based foods.
10
@BMD
Sure, but scrambled eggs (with a bit of butter and/or grated cheese) and boiled cabbage don't taste the same.
14
Chicken eggs are the product of horrific cruelty against defenseless chickens, no matter what sort of nonsense is on the label suggesting otherwise.
9
@JustInsideBeltway
My chicken eggs come from my next door neighbor. Her chickens have a coop they live in at night and a two dogs that sleep next to the entrance in their house. The chicken come out in the morning and occasionally wander out of their yard.
Those of us with gardens love the wandering chickens. They make quick work of insects who are breeding too fast and we know they love to sleep in their coop.
I had a neighbor who kept honey bees. He gave me a big jar of honey every year because I planted native flowers and nonnative flower in my back yard. I would take him bouquets of roses with blends whatever other flowers were blooming. Unfortunately we moved.
He is the reason I am going to take up bee keeping next year.
There are a lot of people who are trying to change things. To roll back to a more simple and a more reasonable sustainability. Not all chickens "are the product of horrific cruelty". Some of us love our chicken, pond fish, bees, flowers, and misshaped artichokes and strawberries.
By the way, I started my first garden on a kitchen's west facing tiny windowsill in Fullerton California in 1977-78. I grew, and killed, many herbs in the learning process.
12
@JustInsideBeltway
Only if those chicken eggs are laid in Confined Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. Chickens are meant to range around on the ground, in the grass, eating bugs and generally having a good time. Eggs from those chickens are much tastier and I'm sure much healthier for anyone who eats them.
6
@JustInsideBeltway
Chicken don't lay eggs; hens do -- actually they make a habit of it, even when they are not "in heat", i.e. when they don't have the urge to have a dozen kids ("chicken") all at the same time.
I eat an egg daily. Guess I will now share the egg with my dog.
1
@Susan Lee
I eat 3-5 eggs a week and feed our Shiba Inu and our Corgi 3 hard boiled eggs a week. They get 1/2 egg each time. It is good for their coats. Just make sure that the egg is not raw because it may prevent the dog from absorbing biotin for the following 24 hours.
Eat all the eggs you want after you throw away the yolk.
1
@Paul
Without the yolk, it is no longer an egg.
1
@Paul
That's an awful waste of food.
@Fran
With the yolk one might die!
skip the yolk
3
This study, if you read it, is blatantly defective in that it misuses (and abuses) the concept of statistical "significance" to reach its conclusions. Here, the sample size is so large, that ANY difference from the null hypothesis will be statistically significant. This is why no one believes studies like this--because they are based on a faulty use of statistics. This entire study needs to be done over; any statistician worth his salt would find it worthless.
15
So we should only do small studies? Not sure you get it.
according to this study I should have died years ago from egg consumption.
39
@me
Why?
What's the link between a 6% risk increase and you dying?
I lost 50 pounds while having Kidney Disease. Kidney Disease is bad, I can't imagine thinking eggs might be too. Smoking is bad, drinking is bad, going outside is bad. Enjoy your life and eat healthy. Period! www.karinarabin.com
5
@Karina Rabin
"Kidney Disease": does it taste as good as eggs?
The text of this article seems to imply that consumption of eggs was directly correlated with mortality, but without being explicit. Other studies have indicated that consumption of eggs is not correlated with blood cholesterol levels. Little wonder readers are left baffled and not a little frustrated.
12
Alright, the more I think about this the more annoyed I get. I am not interested in any more articles from the Times (or anyone else) about a study saying "eggs are good" or "eggs are bad". Call me if you find a study saying "eggs were found to be bad, and through this specific mechanism." Because otherwise you are just piling on. And interrupting my breakfast.
63
Practice starving from childhood! That will solve lots of problems.
8
Actually it does lol!
Some people can tolerate a high cholesterol diet and others cannot. Live you life as you see fit and die when you die. The number of people with a high quality of life in their 80's and up is really small. So, eat eggs and let life go when it is time. Eggs are a quality protein with many other nutrients. Variety is not just the spice of life, it is also a healthy way to eat foods. To modify the quote from Michael Pollan "Eat {a variety of} food, not too much, mostly {from a variety of} plants."
16
Wait this was a self-reported eating study. How reliable can that be. Even I cheat a bit on my food diary. I eyeball what a half cup of soy milk is. My oatmeal is a heaping half cup. And if I'm lucky I remember to write down the two Lifesavers I ate as I passed the breakroom.
Given the previous admonition to not eat eggs because cholesterol kills and the "eggs are great" bandwagon from the past few years when we were told triglycerides were the killer, I'm reluctant to believe any dietary study.
12
@Jen
Lifesavers are very bad for you. Switch to Jordan almonds.
For all those who write about their great-grandmother who ate two eggs a day (and maybe smoked cigarettes!), please remember that everyone’s genetic reality is different. The question to ask is, how much longer would your ancestor have lived WITHOUT the item in question? Would the quality of life have been better?
3
@Gerald O’Keeffe And 'anecdotes' are NOT data. What happens to your cousin doesn't give a clue about what might happen to me in a similar situation.
But people are irrational, predictably so. Even I, who know better, ask others for their experience with a drug, treatment, procedure.
No one's grandpa is an indicator of what works or doesn't work for anyone else or the population at large.
Please look at the data regarding the patient characteristics of each of the quantiles for egg/cholesterol consumption. Those with the lowest quantiles of reported cholesterol consumption have a greater percentage of ethnicity as white, they smoke less and take statins more. Those with the highest quantiles of reported cholesterol consumption, had the greatest percentage of African Americans, they smoked more and were less likely to use statins. I believe the authors adjusted for this, but to what degree. Please provide this information as you are confusing the public with the simple statements you provide. Too many eggs is likely not good for you, but this data provides little verifiable evidence that this is the case. Like many studies you have to parse the data to get to the truth.
7
My grandfather, born 1899, ate two soft boiled eggs every morning for all of his adult life. He lived to be 90.
19
Moderation in all things — that was the motto of my great-grandfather who lived to 103 and, yes, he kept hens and ate eggs. Our bodies are designed to digest fat and cholesterol, although we have a notoriously harder time with sugar and fructose. Bad air quality, smoking, sedentary lifestyles, poor genes, and sugar all play a bigger role in health than merrly eating an egg for breakfast.
15
How often do people have eggs without bacon and without cheese and cooked without butter? Seems like that could be the root cause of confusion of this anecdotal study.
10
@common sense advocate - I think you don't know much about how many different ways people eat eggs.
Good observation.
Similarly, it has always seemed to me that the problem with "carbs" is that most people use them as a fat delivery device. It ain't the fettucine; it's the alfredo.
Balderdash! I ate, for as long as I can remember, and still eat 2-3 eggs a day (red meat, chicken and pork once or twice a month). I also use lots of butter, full milk, full fat yoghurt, heavy whipping cream in my oatmeal. On my father side we have low BP and low cholesterol. My blood tests are perfect and I was not born yesterday... On the other hand, drs. in the USA prescribe pills at the first sign of problem in any part of the body. I think those, often unnecessary, interferences are probably more at the "heart" of many medical problems in America. As an example, among many, A reputable Dr. gave me 2 creams for a minor eye irritation. An ophthalmologist told me to stop the 1st one because it was not appropriate for eyes and would lead to glaucoma. The pharmacist told me not to use the second cream because it was only for transplant people and could cause serious infection in other parts of the body. I have other similar examples. I think I would be a total wreck if I had taken all the meds for ailments that went out on their own.
24
I've just about had it with correlational studies when it comes to intake of specific foods. There may be no good (valid and reliable) method to measure healthful vs unhealthful aspects of specific foods in a general population sample.
20
Cholesterol is only found in foods derived from animals. This means vegans consume no cholesterol. Most vegans are measurably healthier than their same-age peers in the general population.
The main reason there is confusion around this topic is because people don't want to hear it. They want to keep eating their eggs. Meanwhile, the FDA fosters confusion because it serves two contradictory purposes: promoting and protecting the agricultural industry (and egg producers) while also protecting consumers from tainted and and unhealthy food.
But among vegans like myself, this is old news. For instance, in 1987, John Robbins published "Diet for a New America." He devotes 45 pages of his book to a discussion of the adverse connection between cholesterol and heart disease. He concludes by writing, "...in the last thirty years scientists have learned for the first time how we can stop clogging up our arteries. And we are now certain that of all the factors involved in heart disease -- including obesity, lack of exercise, sugar consumption, total fat consumption, caffeine consumption, smoking, high blood pressure, lack of fiber in the diet, and chlorinated drinking and cooking water -- there is one culprit that towers mightily above the rest. We know the culprit is saturated fat and cholesterol." He points to an editorial from the Journal of the American Medical Association noting that "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of coronary occlusions." The editorial was from 1961.
17
“Diet For a New America” is a very important book. It opened my eyes to the horrors of factory farming. It’s a courageous book from someone whose family became rich and powerful from factory farms and promoting consumption of animals and animal products.
8
I eat 4 or 5 eggs a week. I was having symptoms of possible heart problems. I was put through all manner of tests and a heart catheterization. When all was done the heart specialist said I had the cleanest arteries he'd seen in a long time. I'm 75 years old. Ended up, my problem was reflux.
17
@Jo Dear Jo, so ironic because my ''reflux' ended up being severe Coronary Artery Disease. Very very similar symptoms.
1
Your total cholesterol number, and LDL, HDL and Triglycerides, are the true determinants for developing Coronary Heart Disease.
I have genetically determined outrageously high LDL, and developed severe CAD by age 57. My coronary artery, known as "the widow maker', was 95% blocked. Fortunately it was diagnosed and treated (angioplasties and stents) and I have not had a heart attack, YET,
Now I'm 77, and have taken 80 mg Lipitor for 20 years. My total Cholesterol is 154, my LDL is 97 and my HDL is 57. And my Triglycerides are at 175, the most worrisome number.
So the most important things I can do for my health are: exercise, attain or maintain a normal weight, eat the good fats (olive oil, canola oil), and limit alcohol (I don't drink),
Eggs? Not very important to me. I do like scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, (a 'cholesterol nightmare') from time to time.
Oh scrambled with butter, btw.
4
@elained Glad to hear you are doing great. Just FYI in case it is relevant, my husband had high triglycerides and the doctor told him to cut down on sugar (including juice) and refined carbs. He did and his triglyceride number went down to an acceptable level.
1
Eat truly free-range, pasture-raised eggs. They are higher in nutrients and lower in cholesterol.
I have my own chickens. When the chickens subsist more on commercial feed in the winter, we get fewer eggs, and therefore eat fewer eggs. When the chickens are out running through the meadows eating plants and bugs and less commercial feed, the eggs are better for us, the chickens lay more, and we eat more eggs. (The eggs also taste better.)
I’d quite ice cream before I stopped eating eggs.
34
@A Teacher. Yours is the best response of any of the above. Kudos to you. I agree 100%
1
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect. But no matter how heart-healthy the rest of a person’s diet, the more eggs consumed, the greater the risk for cardiovascular events"
These two sentences seem to be contradictory.
12
@David Most people have trouble with this, but the fact is that just because two things go hand in hand (say, taking a daily multivitamin and being healthier) does not prove that one caused the other. Maybe the vitamin-takers had lots of other healthy habits, for example. There may be differences between people who do and do not eat eggs that scientists were unaware of or weren't able to factor in.
1
Would love to hear Dr. Aaron Carroll's take on this!
I decided to forego my consumption of political news today and focus on health and nutrition instead. After reading this, I must resign myself to the fact that, either way, I can expect my head to explode.
542
Yes, just read good books. Life’s too short.
30
@NinaP
Too bad, this is an excellent article that helps people who have too much bad cholesterol make decisions about their diet. Egg yolks, not the whites, are cholesterol bombs, just like shrimp. It's too bad, but that's just how it is. Thanks to this article, people can decide if they wish to add yet more cholesterol to their diet. Try a white omelette, w/o the yolk!
2
I'm going to take this in stride, like most nutritional news, and carry on my boring moderation-filled life. I do wonder, however, what we'll find in 20 years with all the keto adherents. It's clearly a great way to lose weight (and by all accounts, feel good) but it's obviously very high in saturated fat and cholesterol. I honestly don't know what to believe about that.
9
To the contrary:
"Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum (blood) cholesterol, consistent with the AHA/ACC (American Heart Association / American College of Cardiology) report. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption." [page 91 of the 572-page Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee]
20
Would love a better study distinguishing between free range eggs from chickens who forage for food and factory farmed eggs. I just visited a country where all the eggs had the palest, and most sallow looking yolks I’ve ever seen. I must be very spoiled affording my $7/dozen locally raised and free range eggs with the most intense golden colored yolks. Surely these yolks must be more nutritious than their factory farmed cousins!
32
@Exile In
I believe free range chickens consume more omega 3's, from plants, than would factory-farmed chickens. They might also displace some of their grain-feed with their foraged weeds, seeds, etc.
I know grass-fed beef has higher levels of omega 3's vs feeder-lot/grain-fed beef. Butter from grass-fed cows has higher omega 3's.
And omega 3's are protective against heart disease, or blood clots.
So I think I'll up my flax seed, hemp seed, chia seed, and salmon intake and keep eating free-range eggs, till we get more news.
Also, did anyone give the absolute risk of heart disease that eating > 300 mg cholesterol daily is supposed to confer, as opposed to no-egg eaters, or low egg-eaters?
7
@Exile In
Nutrition is one thing heart healthy is another.
@Exile In - I recently spent 8 years in Munich, Germany area. Always bought locally sourced free-range eggs that had the darkest and best tasting yolks I have ever had. All from the 2x weekly farmers market - along with grass fed beef, foraging pork, fowl, etc. I miss it, without having to drive 20 miles.
4
28% of American's over 40 take Cholesterol lowering statins. It seems like a no brainer to eliminate dietary Cholesterol and avoid the statins.
3
Yes, except for the fact that ingestion of cholesterol has been determined for most people to be uncorrelated to blood cholesterol levels, which have been shown to be correlated to heart disease. In short, it's complicated.
28
@John Raffaele
Statin use in the US has soared to make more money for Big Pharma. Doubtful 28% actually need the drug without even trying to adjust their diets first.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220314.Overdosed_America
4
@Jacquie Exactly change your diet . The only diet clinically shown to prevent and reverse heart disease is a Whole food no oil plant diet. Cholesterol has been determined to be correlated to blood cholesterol levels. Dr Esselstyn has shown that eliminating cholesterol from the diet reduces total blood cholesterol. Plants do not have cholesterol.
4
I believe that every one of these warnings about a food like eggs that go in and out of favor comes down to moderation. I was told by a nutritionist many years ago who believes in plant based diet and espoused many things that were ahead of their time. His statement was that a diet with eggs is better than one without. Has many micronutrients not available in any other food. I'm still going to eat them.
68
I appreciate the last century's attempt to find a the perfect human diet, but we make too much of its importance.
"Eat Salmon!" they cry. OK, but then how did homo sapiens survive for +200,000 years in Central Africa without their weekly salmon ration? Conversely, did the Inuit and other ancient peoples of the Arctic have their "Fresh Greens!" shipped in by Amazon?
Understanding our nutritional needs is important, but let's not get hyper-you know what about it all.
18
The comment that this is junk science because cholesterol has to be oxidized to be dangerous says that the writer of that comment doesn't understand how cholesterol is oxidized. Air, light and heat oxidize cholesterol. Cooking increases the oxidation several fold. So, unless you want to eat your eggs raw, they are going to be a problem.
3
@MartyRD
No, no, no! Do not eat your eggs raw!
A percentage of hen eggs (albeit a small percentage) carry the Salmonella bacterium. Cooking is needed to kill the bacterium, which can kill susceptible people a whole lot faster than heart disease.
So, let me try to get this right. One large egg per day increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death from any cause (including dying in a car accident?) by about 10% (185mg/300mg X 17%). In case these risks are additive 10 eggs per day will certainly kill you.
Argh, getting sick and tired of these 'scientific' studies that mix up a really large amount of uncontrolled parameters (30,000 participants with different health problems, environments, eating habits, you name it...),trying to find a correlation without blind tests etc. This is why you get different eating guidelines every year. I'm pretty certain more people die from the anxiety that these ever changing guidelines are causing than by the small increase of risk when they simply ignore the advice.
95
As you can tell from the ten comments below, most are skeptical about these and similar reports. They are observational, not causal, and they are helping to create a nation of neurotics, "the worried well". Would you rather live to be a 98-year old hypochondriac or a Mozart, George Gershwin, or John Keats?
6
Eggs taste good . Heart disease is bad . If you have risk factors for heart disease , beware of eggs . If you have minimal risk factors , eggs are not important . Epidemiologists look at large, general effects.
6
That reminds me, you know what sounds good right now? Two runny fried eggs, salt and pepper. On toast.
Tomorrow I’ll have oatmeal and peanut butter. But it’s eggs today!
And if you want to make sure you don’t expire before 105, then go ahead and micromanage your nutrients. If you want to live your life then just manage your portions and eat everything - and move your body constantly. This isn’t hard.
78
@BBB
Fried eggs are easier to make because you don't have to scramble them first, but I still prefer scrambled eggs: they create the illusion that it's all yolks and no whites.
1
I think the last sentence of the article is to the point: ",,,there are some people for whom eating eggs is bad and others who are not affected." So why not just get your cholesterol checked?
12
How can people take these studies and recommendations seriously? They change constantly!
Everything in moderation.
For what it’s worth, my ex-wife has been morbidly obese for most of her life. She doesn’t have any apparent life-threatening illnesses. When the newscasters announce that obesity is the #1 cause of deaths in the U.S., I check my watch and say: “I’m still waiting!”
5
It’s processed food not eggs!!!! Look at the grocery carts. Junk food!!!
35
Oatmeal it is, I am sorry to say. I LOVE eggs...
5
Were those eggs with toast and hashbrowns ? I'd ditch the toast first, then the hashbrowns, but never the eggs.
Okay, okay. So eggs are not what they are cracked up to be, at least they can take a yolk.
Forgive me of my bad pun sin.
20
Looks like 98% of NYT readers disrespect the science as reported here. Worse than the anti-vaxxers, eh.
Although this is just a pop newspaper account, my impression is that the researchers have created a reasonably sound post-facto method. Remains to be seen, of course.
I think they've done a good job separating the ignorant slobs who also eat many eggs from the decent folks who eat few eggs and are food-smart in other ways... incidentally. In other words, not quite the fallacy of other correlational studies, even studies with highfalutin' correctional stats.
3
@Ben 30,000 people self reporting their egg consumption over 17 years - the data cannot possibly be accurate so how can the conclusions be worth anything? Garbage in garbage out
2
This says that egg YOLKS are bad -- not eggs in general. Don't throw the egg whites out with the yolk.
3
@David Booth
On the contrary, throw out the whites and eat the yolks.
First they were good for you,then bad for you,then the cholesterol actually helped your good cholesterol levels. Then bad for you then good for you. Now bad for you again. So what are we actually to believe?
35
Before becoming alarmed by the Times typically sensationalistic health reporting, consider the following two statements buried inside the article:
"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect."
"The numbers the authors cite indicate the percentage of additional risk from a high-cholesterol diet, so the effect is not striking."
Once again the Times reports correlations from observational studies as though they were "cause and effect." Oh sure, they provide a one-sentence disclaimer, then proceed to write an hysterical article intended to alarm. Relax everyone. This is just the usual Times alarmist "health" reporting. Truly irresponsible.
15
Eggsperts. Bah!
10
...so.... I bet no women were part of this glorious experiment
10
@Peggy if you had read the study you would know that there were women included.
-----"Results This analysis included 29 615 participants (mean [SD] age, 51.6 [13.5] years at baseline) of whom 13 299 (44.9%) were men and 9204 (31.1%) were black."
Less than half were men. The remainder were women.
55% women
What about all the meat saturated diets American eat, this must be a big contributing factor to high cholesterol in their diets.
5
@Ijaz Jamall (Couldn't comment directly)
And even further - show a direct linkage between serum cholesterol and heart disease adjusting for genetics and other factors.
Only in controlled trials would we be able to tease out the cause-and-effects. We reject this type of experimentation on humans but the fast-food chains are doing it every day.
3
I've never been a big fan of eggs, and even less of a fan of egg yolks, so luckily, this doesn't affect my diet calculus much.
1
"It found that for each additional 300 milligrams a day of cholesterol in the diet, there was a 17 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease and an 18 percent increased risk of premature death from any cause."
Given that:
1) only eat one to two eggs per week (usually in the form of pancakes or french toast),
2) have never had any symptoms of heart disease,
3) always have decent cholesterol numbers, and most importantly,
4) don't fear death, premature or otherwise,
I will keep my eggs.
10
A single study where people “recalled” what they ate is not definitive. There is no model for cause and effect, and only anecdotal responses. I’m not giving up good nutrition without better evidence.
34
Why so skeptical? I can recall exactly what I've eaten. For example, I am absolutely certain that I did not eat that entire 28 oz carton of ice cream last night. There is just no way. I don't know who did eat it, but it certainly wasn't me.
5
I will wait until tomorrow.
A new study showing that egg consumption is just peachy will be out then (probably).
21
I'm skeptical. Over the past 20 years our diets have changed so often (low fat / low carb / more chicken & turkey / different sweeteners / different oils / less sodas / less diet drinks) that the idea that a one-time survey of what people ate is going to be representative of the following 15-20 years is just ridiculous. Particularly breakfast has changed - from eggs and bacon, lego waffles, poptarts, and sugary cereals to no juice, no margarine or transfat, more better coffee, greek yogurt, steel ground oatmeal, healthier breads, and eggs again as a healthier protein. I don't trust the data, and I think any effect is likely to be small, also add in new and better drugs in greater use (statins, etc) over the period. Yet the country has gotten fatter, with more diabetes, and I doubt increased egg consumption has contributed to that. Eggs are still one of the cheapest protein sources (89cts per dozen at my Aldi's) and I doubt anyone in the study has eaten the same breakfast every day over the past 15-30 years.
24
Why does Norrina B. Allen say that to not eat any eggs at all wouldn't be the right message? Eggs (and other animal products) can only be harmful to humans. There is more than enough protein in plants -- you don't even need to ever eat legumes, as any whole plant foods will give you all that you need. Research % of protein in human breast milk if interested -- we are designed to consume very little of the stuff, even during our period of greatest growth.
8
@Kim
If animal products can only be harmful to humans how do you account for our canine and incisor teeth in addition to grinding molars? Our canines are tending toward the vestigial at this point in our evolution but they are still canines - designed to grab, hold and shred.
Humans are omnivores as evidenced by our dentition as well as our intestinal tract. We can choose not eat animal products - but that is a philosophical or moral decision not one dictated by physiology.
Breast milk may be low in (very highly assimilable) proteins but babies aren't building muscles. They are rapidly creating diversified cells which require saturated fat and cholesterol for sturdy cell walls. Breast milk is quite high in these two nutrients. This is where infant physiology and adult physiology differ. As adults our cells aren't proliferating like a growing baby so we don't need the fats and cholesterol, we need protein to repair the daily wear and tear on our body's infrastructure.
If that's not enough science for you, humans are members of the animal kingdom. Which means that breast milk is an animal product. If you were breastfed, you started in this world consuming animal protein, cholesterol and fat. Proof that our digestion can handle at least same species animal products without harm.
I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 30 years. I'm also a biologist. If you want to be vegan, doG bless you. But don't use unsound evidence in an attempt to justify your personal choices.
7
@Kim
I stopped reading your comment after "Eggs (and other animal products) can only be harmful to humans."
Assertions like this are absurd in the extreme.
4
@Kim
Vegan nonsense from start to finish. An unsupplemented vegan diet will literally kill you.
Humans and human ancestors have obtained protein from animal foods for literally millions of years. With the exception of soy, few plant foods provide all essential amino acids, and you have to overeat more calories from plant foods compared to animal foods to get the same amount of protein.
The kinds of studies alluded to in this article tend to be grossly misleading and generally useless because they measure one variable in a multi-variable world. There are, of course, instances where one variable predominates, such as in cigarette consumption and the incidence of lung cancer, but eating one-half an egg a day is very unlikely to be in that category.
54
@Richard
How do you eat half an egg a day?
Share it?
Or is this an average?
2
This is the unsurprising result of years of the usual sponsor bias among nutrition "researchers", most of whom are beholden to commodity and/or corporate based funding sources.
Though this is often dismissed in scientific publications as "not involved in experimental design or analysis", the pressure to maintain funding - and rewards for doing so - create predictable results.
Indeed, the penultimate reward for many of these "researchers", now deeply entrenched in the funding game, is being invited to create federal nutrition guidelines, often under the direction of former corporate or commodity group leaders.
That the results of this run counter to common sense or good science should surprise nobody.
6
Here we go again! Next week/month/year/decade a "new" study will come to another finding and we'll be back to square one(hundred). It is changing results like those of dietary guidelines that convince Joe Average that the "experts" aren't.
13
Eggs along with meat and dairy are the only foods that contain cholesterol. That's the scientific reason why a plant based diet is the most healthy. It's a fact that's fairly well established at this point. It's only people's resistance to change and addiction to these foods, and what they represent, that keeps doubt and anti plant based sentiment going.
24
@Una If you ate no meat ,dairy or eggs you could still have high cholesterol. I eat 15 eggs a week,1 gallon of milk am 59 and my cholesterol is fine.
15
@Una cholesterol is the building block of hormones that we require to survive. It is the precursor of vitamin D generation in the skin and we need it to absorb-fat-soluble vitamins (A,D,E,K). It is necessary for normal growth and brain development, and aids in cell repair. Our bodies need cholesterol. Maybe there are other factors going on in a body that make cholesterol bad, but we can't live without it. :-)
25
@phillypretzel, we don't need to eat cholesterol; our bodies make it. And generally, the levels of cholesterol are kept relatively constant: the more cholesterol we eat, the less we make, and vice versa. But saturated fats act to increase our level of cholesterol synthesis, which results in higher levels of cholesterol. An egg contains about 1.6 g saturated fat, in addition to it's 187 g of cholesterol. I don't eat eggs; instead, I eat plant based whole foods, no animal products, and minimal to no processed foods.
7
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, published by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, for example, states that we “should eat as little cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern.”
So our actual federal tax money paid who knows how much for HHS to issue this guideline, and they instruct us to consume a healthy pattern? That is literally impossible. Yes, people make mistakes, but I presume this guideline went through several levels of review. It is disconcerting to know that people whose actual job is to write cannot do so competently. And this has a real effect when the same people draft legislation. Legislation must be drafted clearly so people can comply with it and courts can enforce it. We really need to restore expertise to the federal government.
3
I am reminded of the obese person who goes into McD's, gets their big mac or 2, large fries, and a supersized DIET drink. Even if the DIET drink truly was 'non-fattening' (they aren't), there is a cognitive disconnect here. As someone else stated, eggs are far from the most important deitary issue in this country.
16
I would like to know whether blood cholesterol and HDL and LDL levels were measured in the study and whether these had any correlation with the health effects mentioned.
96
Isn't this the first question that comes to mind? Don't we really want to estimate the impact on us as individuals? A lipid panel is easy to come by. If our components and ratio are all within bounds, would that mean that our cholesterol intake is not at a problem level?
And: Is the risk calculated here mostly a function of that percentage of the population for whom dietary cholesterol directly raises blood cholesterol?
6
Read "Cholesterol is not the culprit" by Fred Kummerow. For 60 years, he warned about the dangers of trans fat. In 2017, he died at the age of 102.
Eggs contain all 8 amino acids that must come from food. Cholesterol has to be oxidized for it to harm you.
"Increased risk" ? Absolute or relative ? Sounds like junk science concocted to lasso more people into the pharmaceutical clutches of the medical industrial complex.
128
@Dan M
Actually, the article mentions the amino acids and other health benefits of eggs and the fact that the increased risk is not large. But that does not make this "junk science." That term should be reserved for actual scientifically invalid studies. This study used real data and made valid correlations. The article points out the inability to draw a conclusion re cause and effect, and one of the scientists said the takeaway is NOT "don't eat eggs."
21
And, were these eggs from pastured hens, providing additional Omega 3 fatty acids, or factory farmed? As I understand it, the effects may be quite different. Shoddy research and/or reporting is our biggest dietary concern.
1
@Dan M The study says that they looked at both eggs alone and at over all diet, including fiber, saturated and unsaturated fat, animal fat, and sodium. And they did different Hazard ratio (the 17%) and Absolute risk (fewer than 5% of the whole group actually had heart attacks). They ran the study to clarify the risk of dietary cholesterol and outcomes. “We really looked at whether individuals who ate a higher number of eggs per week experience higher rates of heart disease and mortality,” she explains. “We found that they did in fact have higher risk, but that the risks were actually explained by the cholesterol contained within the eggs. That was the reason we saw this risk of heart disease.” So this added to the body of evidence that dietary cholesterol, including that in eggs, is associated with increased risk of heart attacks.
1
Oops - earlier post: I wrote 'hyponUtremia' - should be 'hyponAtremia'.
No eggs, no meat, lots of fresh vegetables and fruits that are flown in, bad, bad poison flying airplanes, what's left?
Death and taxes.
Eat, drink, and be merry...
27
Drinking too much water is also bad for you - hyponutrimia and eventually death. My understanding is that it is more dangerous and trickier to fix than deyhdration.
So, maybe the message is not to eat too much of anything or too much period - a major health issue in this country - and eat according to your specific health and lifestyle (exercise) issues. I have no cholesterol problem even though I am middle aged, so I'll continue to eat eggs in moderation. My maternal grandfather ate several eggs every day for breakfast, and when he died (perotinitis) and they did an autopsy, they said that he had the insides of a man in his 20s.
That said, not all eggs are the same - the eggs of organically fed chickens and perhaps chickens of a particular breed may have very different characteristics, not just in taste but also in health, that may give different results in a study. E.g., milk from different animals and even the same animals fed differently, and processed differently (low heat pasteurization vs. high heat pasteurization) does have different characteristics.
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@Me
Correction: hyponAtremia, not hyponUtremia.
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Remember when butter was shunned in flavor of marjoram
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@Dave Um I think you meant margarine!
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@Dave No, but I do remember when pot was cut with oregano.
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@Dave
Margarine, not marjoram -- which is a wonderful herb closely related to oregano.
Eat eggs. Humans have always eaten eggs. Natural food is not bad. Even Ancel Keyes acknowledge that dietary cholesterol didn't raise serum cholesterol. And the connection between LDL and CDV is tenuous at best - some might say nonexistent. Our livers make the stuff. Seems like our own personal biochemistry probably knows what it's doing.
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Ugh. Stop it already. Is there any wonder why many Americans distrust scientists when ‘science’ produces conflicting results? Eggs were good, then bad, then good, now bad again, all in my one adult lifetime.
I myself am tired of yo-yo proclamations, even though I take the time to read and evaluate the disclaimers in the fine print of the final paragraphs. If I’m fed up, I can only imagine the reaction of those who read only the headlines. What’s the solution? Maybe the media should not report results of studies that are not definitive due to poor design. Or point out the design flaws in the first paragraphs.
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So many diverging studies about this issue.
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Weren't the "experts" saying eggs are good for us? Eggs good; eggs bad; eggs good; eggs bad... I'm going out on a limb and predicting the next study will show eggs are good again. Yeah, I'm cynical. We're all going to die one day, eggs or no eggs.
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@Lifelong New Yorker The FDA does not allow eggs to be advertised as healthy. No the experts did not change and say eggs are good for you. The Egg board with their so called experts fund their phony studies. The American Heart Assoc. stills puts Cholesterol as a leading predictor or Heart disease, and yes eating Cholesterol containing food raises Cholesterol.
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@John Raffaele Uh, no. The consensus of recent studies is that dietary cholesterol does not increase serum cholesterol except for a small subset of people--and even for them, the increase is not generally of importance.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16596800
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@John Raffaele
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood serum cholesterol. This has been known for decades, even Ancel Keys admitted this.
Perhaps you should mix a statin tablet into your scambled eggs.
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@Herman Krieger
Best reply ever!
....laughter...the best medicine!
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To quote Michael Pollan "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." You can decide whether or not eggs are food you should eat. The research doesn't matter- we're all going to die. Enjoy life instead.
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@famharris
And what I like most about Michael Pollan is that he doesn’t bother with, you know, that whole science thing. He has a good brain, so he can rely on common sense - what feels true - the way Donald J. Trump does.
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Eggs are great for you. Eggs are bad. The incredible edible egg. Too much cholesterol. Cholesterol consumption doesn't matter. Eating eggs increases your risk of death. You need cholesterol for good brain function. Don't eat the yolk. Eat plenty. Dietary cholesterol doesn't matter. It might be bad for you. It might not.
So the nutrition mantra goes. And so on and so on. Any news here?
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I saw an obituary a few years ago of an Italian woman who died at the age of 117. She thought the secret to her long life was that she ate 3 raw eggs a day.
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@Hector Ing Maybe it’s the raw part that matters; the denaturing of some elements and destruction of others in the cooking process may be the problem. My father the biochemist used to preach eating at least one raw food at every meal.
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@Hector Ing I remember her! Yes she ate a lot of eggs
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@Hector Ing
I saw a similar article on a man in South America who turned 115 and credited his longevity to having stopped smoking 25 years prior.
I don't smoke, but if I make it to 90, I'm going to start doing every unhealthy thing imaginable just for the heck of it.
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I just tried to fry half an egg. It’s a pretty messy job.
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Lol, fry the whole egg, eat the white and leave approximately half the yolk on the plate when done. I do it often
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@Andrew, it's easy: take out the yolk
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@Andrew-If you were all serious with this little scenario, just fry one egg and cut it in half.
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"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect." I am 72 and have probably read that many articles on this topic in the Times. This is not news. It gives no guidance. It simply detracts from the reader's day. A study that is "observational" only and "cannot establish cause and effect" is not fake news; it is no news and really doesn't deserve space in your newspaper. Enlighten us. Don't just give us more anxiety with no way to allay it.
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I must disagree. science is incremental and happens in many little steps. if we waited for definitive answers we'd never have any news to read.
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@Museman I don't get anxious about stuff like this because wait five or ten years and another study will come out that says the opposite. Eat what you enjoy.
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@Lee Siegel dietary science seems more like a yoyo than incremental.
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Darn...I was just cooking my 5 eggs for lunch when I read this... But only one yolk, and 4 egg whites... I think that is the way to go...or not....
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@Paul. Almost all the cholesterol in a chicken egg is in the yolk; egg whites contain little to none. So, that lunch of yours was a high protein/low-ish cholesterol one, unless you fried it in butter.
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A bit of a ho-hum headline which reflects the study's finding. Take a look at the JAMA article linked to in this article, especially the last sentence: "The associations between egg consumption and incident CVD [cardiovascular disease] ....were no longer significant after adjusting for dietary cholesterol consumption". In other words, do watch your cholesterol intake, but the occasional egg won't kill you. Plus, there's always egg whites - most cholesterol in an egg is in the yolk. Now, if your daily breakfast consists of steak and eggs and home fries, all fried in butter, yes, you're asking for trouble. Basically, eating healthy within reason won't add to your genetic risk of a heart attack or stroke, eating frequent breakfasts at McBurgerWendy's probably does. So do the doughnuts.
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I eat eggs. I'm not afraid of them. The yolks are the best parts.
Of all of the things to worry about in the standard diets of Americans, I suspect that egg probably are somewhere around # 1900 on the list. Or lower.
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Yeah, not so much. Eggs are directly linked to multiple negative health outcomes in numerous long term nutritional studies.
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@cheryl
You suspect? So you are not a scientist? It bothers me to see so many readers come here to make claims without the requisite research or background. This article helps people with high cholesterol, that might not be you, but still.
@cheryl Eggs are designed by nature to be a nutritious meal. Eggs in powder form added to junk food probably aren't. How many of the eggs we consume are not the hard-boiled one we have for breakfast?
(I'm not afraid of eggs either. Or of dairy, or meat, or anything that's real food. Just of quantities.)
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To summarize: Eggs, and dietary cholesterol in general, are probably bad for some people and perfectly fine for other people. Eat accordingly.
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@Still Waiting for a NBA Title More simply put "One man's meet is another man's poison."
As many Americans, I am perplexed by the constant contradictions in what is good and not good for one's dietary health. I've decided to eat all good and normal foods, only avoiding fried, sugary and fat-laden dishes, while increasing fiber from vegetables and whole grains. This means that nearly every "normal" food is on the menu. I suggest we all adopt this eating routine and ignore all of the guesswork that goes into the industry of food-advice.
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The article says, “But because heart disease is the most common cause of death in the United States — more common than all forms of cancer combined — even a small relative increase in rates of illness means a large increase in the number of deaths.”
Yes, a large increase in the number of deaths from heart disease...but everyone dies from something. I’ll keep eating a few eggs a week.
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@Cherie Marcus
You're missing the point. That everyone dies is irrelevant. You want to live healthier longer (not live longer) and if you're prone to cardiovascular disease, try salmon a few times a week instead and avoid consumption of eggs (unless you stick just with egg whites) as this study strongly suggests. You might want to check with your cardiologist and get your cholesterol levels checked. You might be one of the lucky ones.
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@Dr Jay Seitz No, he didn't miss the point. Amercans' obsession with micromanaging food consumption based on the "authoritative" scientific study, which may or may not contradict the previous and/or the next "authoritative" study is just no way to live, sorry. Eat good food, in balance and moderation, and be happy.
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@Dr Jay Seitz Which salmon? The natural ocean grown salmon laced with mercury or the farm grown salmon with deficient omega-3s?
Egg whites are rich in protein but the egg yolks are abundant with harder to get B vitamins. Or so I have read.
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In order for these data to be taken seriously, I would need to see the data that shows that dietary cholesterol has any correlation with serum cholesterol. To my knowledge, such data do not exist.
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@Ijaz Jamall
And even further - show a direct linkage between serum cholesterol and heart disease adjusting for genetics and other factors.
Only in controlled trials would we be able to tease out the cause-and-effects. We reject this type of experimentation on humans but the fast-food chains are doing it every day.
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@Ijaz Jamall:
Here is a study that specifically studied effect of intake from 3 eggs/day, directly measuring serum cholesterol.
Such data does exist. This is only one study - there are others:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5852834/
FINDINGS (see section 3.2, Table 4):
"Total cholesterol (p = 0.040), HDL-C (p = 0.030) and LDL-C (p = 0.049) were higher after the egg when compared to the choline period. However, no change was observed in the LDL-C/HDL-C ratio."
So total cholesterol, HDL, and LDL were all higher in serum, due to intake of 3 eggs/day. no change in serum LDL/HDL ratio. It found impact (increases) in plasma lipids.
CAVEAT: This study was funded by the "Egg Nutrition Center" (a "pro-egg" organization).
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@INShort term study - 13 weeks. Total cholesterol increased only 7.5% in the 3-egg group- not clinically significant. Also, same study showed increase in HDL - aka the "good cholesterol". The study you want would radiojlabel the cholesterol in eggs and look for that labeled cholesterol in the serum. Not found in actual study.
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"The study findings are observational and cannot establish cause and effect."
That pretty much says it.
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@GPS "pretty much says it"? Context is a friend of knowledge. Let me suggest some context from the philosophy of science.
The absence of falsification (vs. the presence of the truth) is based on passing both deductive and inductive tests. See Karl Popper. Eggs appear to have failed this inductive test that eggs do not harm you. Statistically, this study shows that you cannot say they don't. Understanding the mechanisms of why "eggs do not harm you" is false may come later. In the mean time, forewarned is forearmed.
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@Steve as pointed out by another, the abstract of this study, found on the JAMA site concludes: " The associations between egg consumption and incident CVD (adjusted HR, 0.99 [95% CI, 0.93-1.05]; adjusted ARD, −0.47% [95% CI, −1.83% to 0.88%]) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.03 [95% CI, 0.97-1.09]; adjusted ARD, 0.71% [95% CI, −0.85% to 2.28%]) were no longer significant after adjusting for dietary cholesterol consumption."
The problem is not this study, but the journalist's used of this study to imply a significant association that was not found.
Further: "Therefore, dietary cholesterol from eggs appears to regulate endogenous synthesis of cholesterol in such a way that the LDL-C/HDL-C ratio is maintained." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29495288
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Also the study only included males of which were more than 40% black males and I could be wrong but I believe that they are a demographic already more likely to develop heart disease.
8
Just wait a couple of months before for the next newest research findings.
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These types of studies have little meaning in the U.S., where diets are more or less homogeneous (a diet of 3 eggs/day vs. 4 eggs/day isn’t really all that different)...and the risk of chronic disease is equally homogeneous (a 50% difference doesn’t actually mean that much if we’re saying that 1 out of 5,000 people have a heart attack in one group vs. 2 out of 5,000 in another - yes, one group has a 50% lower risk of a heart attack, but we’re still only talking about 1 additional heart attack for every 5,000 people). More stunning are data from places like China, where there are populations that eat dramatically different diets from village to village, consistent over decades. There you see risk ratios for chronic disease that vary by a thousand-fold. In these places, plant-based diets show a clear advantage over animal-based diets.
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Was there no differentiation of high-density and low-density lipoproteins (HDL and LDL) in the journal article?
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Oh, here we go again. We've been through all this before: no eggs, no shrimp, no avocado, etc., etc., ad infinitum. We just can't reconcile the fact that people are now living beyond what the human body was built for, and we are going to die of something. Very frustrating for those of us who try to live healthy, chemical-free lives.
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@arjayeff Does your "chemical-free" life exclude dihydrogen monoxide from your the chemical soup otherwise known as your body?
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@arjayeff
Sorry, but you need to get your facts straight. Avocado does not belong in the list of eggs and shrimp!
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