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Medicine Science

Three or More Eggs a Week Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease and Early Death, Study Says (cnn.com) 286

It's been debated for years: Are eggs good or bad for you? People who eat an added three or four eggs a week or 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day, have a higher risk of both heart disease and early death compared with those who eat fewer eggs, new research finds. From a report: "Eggs, specially the yolk, are a major source of dietary cholesterol," wrote Victor Zhong, lead study author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. In a study published this month in the medical journal JAMA, he and his colleagues noted that a single large egg contains about 186 milligrams of cholesterol. The researchers examined data from six US study groups including more than 29,000 people followed for 17 and a half years on average. Over the follow-up period, a total of 5,400 cardiovascular events occurred, including 1,302 fatal and nonfatal strokes, 1,897 incidents of fatal and nonfatal heart failure and 113 other heart disease deaths. An additional 6,132 participants died of other causes. Consuming an additional 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day was associated with a 3.2% higher risk of heart disease and a 4.4% higher risk of early death, Zhong's analysis of the data showed. And each additional half an egg consumed per day was associated with a 1.1% higher risk of cardiovascular disease and 1.9% higher risk of early death due to any cause, the researchers found.
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Three or More Eggs a Week Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease and Early Death, Study Says

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  • Wait a week (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:13PM (#58300132) Homepage

    Wait a week, there will be new advice.

    After all these years with conflicting nutrition advice, I've come to the conclusion that we have no idea what we're talking about when it comes to the human body. Sure; we're pretty sure about the big things, but the details still throw us.

    Avoid the processed crap, get some exercise...that's pretty much the best you can do.

    • Avoid the processed crap, get some exercise...that's pretty much the best you can do.

      All things in moderation, except moderation, And maybe crack.

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:21PM (#58300188)

      No, there is never new advice. The advice is always the same; eat a traditional diet with lots of fruits, vegetables, fiber, and whole grains, limit sugars, fats, and highly processed foods.

      The study is being misrepresented in the media to focus on eggs, even though it looked at total cholesterol not eggs. They're taking numbers for cholesterol, telling you how many eggs they think that is equivalent to, and then using wording that tricks the media into saying "eggs" in the headlines. This isn't even about eggs. And it contradicts a lot of past research. And it is based on what people report about their eating habits, which is not even scientific.

      It may be, for example, that people who eat more than 1lb of breakfast sausage per week tend to under-report it. It may also be true that people who report eating 2 or more eggs per day are more likely to eat breakfast sausage. There is all sorts of problems like this when you go by what people report that they ate.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        No, there is never new advice. The advice is always the same

        Indeed. If you get your advice from doctors or nutritionists it is steady. If you get it from CNN, it is not.

        The study is being misrepresented in the media to focus on eggs, even though it looked at total cholesterol not eggs.

        It also is only a correlation, and the researchers explicitly make this clear in their paper.

        People that forgo eggs are likely to eat healthier in general, exercise more, and are likely better educated and wealthier. The eggs themselves may not be the causative factor.

        • by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:26PM (#58300750) Journal

          Indeed. If you get your advice from doctors or nutritionists it is steady. If you get it from CNN, it is not.

          This just isn't true -- and if it is then it's only because your doctor hasn't read any medical literature for the last 40 years. The impact of dietary cholesterol has gone back and forth repeatedly for the last decade in peer-reviewed journals. CNN has nothing to do with it.

          The OP is, sadly, very correct. Despite 100+ years of advanced medical research into nutrition we still apparently don't know jack shit about what makes an ideal healthy diet. It's easy to say "avoid overly processed foods and get exercise", but when detailed questions come up like "how much dietary cholesterol should I eat each day?" you'll never get a satisfactory answer.

          • There probably won't be a single answer, humanity is a weird ape that managed to evolve to be able to survive on mostly grain, and even got our domesticated canines to do it better than their wild type cousins. Look at the variability in being able to continue to digest lactose. Being able to not starve to death is probably the biggest selective pressure on humanity in recent memory that isn't related to communicable disease, so there's going to be lots of variability.
            • that managed to evolve to be able to survive on mostly grain

              Given that that was less than fiftty thousand years ago, it might explain why we haven't exactly evolved anything resembling a "grain-optimized" digestive system.

              The advantages of grain have been logistical (storage, sileage), not nutritional.

              • Yes exactly, grain fed army in the ancient world may be individually less healthy but you'll have a whole hell of a lot of them, and those silos will keep you eating bread when your venison eating neighbors are starving.
            • by Trogre ( 513942 )

              ...and were probably lucky if they lived long enough to die of heart disease. So a diet of mostly grain doesn't guarantee any longevity beyond reproduction.

              • on't confuse high infant and childhood mortality that gives a low "average lifespan at birth" number with the idea that people didn't live as long; people who survived to adulthood had a similar lifespan to hunter-gatherers today, and the oldest members of the community would be just as old as the oldest people today.

                • by jma05 ( 897351 )

                  > the oldest members of the community would be just as old as the oldest people today.

                  They weren't.

                  While they did survive better beyond childhood, and women did better after child bearing age, they certainly did not have people around in 90s like we do today.

                  How many centurion skeletons do you think we found in archeological digs?

          • when detailed questions come up like "how much dietary cholesterol should I eat each day?" you'll never get a satisfactory answer

            I just follow common sense. Our ancestors would never refuse an egg, and neither would any animal in the wild.

          • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @04:49AM (#58303078)

            It's easy to say "avoid overly processed foods and get exercise", but when detailed questions come up like "how much dietary cholesterol should I eat each day?" you'll never get a satisfactory answer.

            You're missing the simple and obvious answer that was already given to you.

            "how much dietary cholesterol should I eat each day?"
            The answer is: That is the wrong question. "avoid overly processed foods and get exercise." That literally is the answer. Stop trying to count that shit. Counting the cholesterol will not somehow magically stop the cheeseburders and oreos from giving you heart disease. People who eat a traditional diet, made from whole ingredients instead of processed partial-ingredients, and including sufficient fruits and vegetables, already don't have the diet-related problems.

            Imagine if the question was, "How can I fly by flapping my arms" and the answer was, "You can't fly by flapping your arms, but if you exercise you can jump higher." And you simply complained, "But that still doesn't tell me how to fly by flapping my arms!" Yeah, duh.

            It has been well established, scientifically, that medicine currently has no useful advice to give you specifically to cholesterol intake, and yet, it does have lots of useful advice about which of those foods whose cholesterol you would measure are traditional healthy foods, and which are processed foods.

        • No, there is never new advice. The advice is always the same

          Indeed. If you get your advice from doctors or nutritionists it is steady. If you get it from CNN, it is not.

          The advice changes over time, even from experts
          https://www.healthyway.com/con... [healthyway.com]

          I'm sure you're old enough to remember when Dr Robert Atkins was called a quack. It took years to catch up to his ideas on the benefits of a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. You probably also remember when butter was bad and margarine was good. Until they realized they had it backwards.

          The movie "Sleeper" had a funny segment on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • by SlaveToTheGrind ( 546262 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:18PM (#58300670)

        The study is being misrepresented in the media to focus on eggs, even though it looked at total cholesterol not eggs.

        No, it looked at both additional cholesterol and additional eggs, independently:

        Findings Among 29615 adults pooled from 6 prospective cohort studies in the United States with a median follow-up of 17.5 years, each additional 300 mg of dietary cholesterol consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.17; adjusted absolute risk difference [ARD], 3.24%) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.18; adjusted ARD, 4.43%), and each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted HR, 1.06; adjusted ARD, 1.11%) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.08; adjusted ARD, 1.93%).

        • by taustin ( 171655 )

          It covered the amount of cholesterol in egg yolks, but did it also cover the amount of lecithin in egg yolks? The stuff that lowers bad cholesterol and increases good cholesterol, for which egg yolks are a commercial source?

          This is just more scare mongering. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever is behind it has been short selling stock in poultry farms.

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        That is utter bullshit and a blatant falsehood. Were you just born yesterday? Some of us weren't and we have good memories.

      • by Trogre ( 513942 )

        What exactly constitutes "traditional"?

        So you recommend taking in more whole grains than fatty acids? And no nuts?

        • What sort of weird place are you from that has grains, and no nuts? That's just insane.

          If you can't find a traditional diet... actually, no. If you say you can't figure out what it means, I say you're just lying. Flat out. There is no chance you're asking out of honest intellectual interest. Zip. Zilch. Food is just too big a part of human existence for there to be people who are capable of understanding words generally, but haven't ever encountered the idea of a traditional diet.

          I'm perfectly willing to be

      • by OFnow ( 1098151 )

        No, there is never new advice. The advice is always the same; eat a traditional diet with lots of fruits, vegetables, fiber, and whole grains, limit sugars, fats, and highly processed foods.

        The advice of Doctors Gundry, Perlmutter, and some others is not the same at all. Read their books
        to find the research.

      • My first thought when I read the headline was "yeah, right". I checked the source link, saw it was cnn, then read the rest of the summary to see how many holes I could find. I'm sure the actual paper is fine, and they seem to have a decent sample size and timeframe, but the summary leaves out a lot of details that are linkely in there somewhere and substantially alter the final conclusions.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      A few years ago I was listening to a lecture on TED (can't remember which) by a neuroscientist. He said when you hear about a study reported in the press, ignore it because it's wrong.

      For example, years ago people were buying Mozart CDs for their babies and it turned out to be nothing. The trouble with our science reporting is that these studies come out and are hyped beyond belief. People make lifestyle changes and it turns out it was for nothing and in some cases detrimental.

      On the other hand, if making

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 )
        You started off making sense and being coherent but you lost me when you started spewing misinformed, bigoted foolishness at the end. No one wants pollution. You seem to have a hard time differentiating between the stated goal of a reform and the actual practice once it's implemented.
        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          In fact, there are people who modify their diesel trucks to spew large clouds of soot. In doing so, they spend money, reduce engine power, and reduce fuel milage. Apparently they DO want pollution. I have no idea why. Search on "rolling coal".

          A subset of those people like to crowd around Tesla superchargers with a stated goal of blocking access to the charger.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        Quitting petrochemicals cold turkey would be an apcalyptic nightmare scenario. It would we a race to see which one of us ended up dead first. You might go first despite me having a very big lead on you.

        Your entire society runs on energy much of it derived from fossil fuels and all manner of critical devices also largely composed of fossil fuels.

        You can't live in the future (like some Apple weenie), you have to deal with the world and technology as it exists now. Otherwise you end up with power outages, dise

    • Re:Wait a week (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quenda ( 644621 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:00PM (#58300530)

      Wait a week, there will be new advice.

      What advice? There is no advice here, just an observation of a small correlation. And even that has been very badly reported.

      Our modern diet, with plenty of meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables is a huge improvement over what out peasant ancestors ate.
      We are stronger, healthier and more intelligent from improved childhood nutrition, and living decades longer.

      Sure, get some exercise, and avoid food that makes you fat.

    • Pretty much. Also, a lot of these studies just look at the averages, but one person's metabolism can be vastly different from another. Do regular health checks and adjust your diet accordingly. My brother needs to watch his cholesterol, but mine always comes out fine and I eat a ton of eggs.
    • by slazzy ( 864185 )
      I think that's the best advice. They've gone back and forth so many times on if eggs are good for you or not it's hard to take it seriously. Exercise is probably the single best thing you can do for your health, unless you get hit by a bus...
    • by jrumney ( 197329 )
      Who funded this study I wonder? I guess it was because of our ancestors' egg free diets that they had lower incidence of heart disease, and not because they didn't have high sugar, high sodium, processed food in their diet.
    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      there should be a study about how the stress of reading studies increases risk of heart attack. Ever read the details of these 'increased risks'? A lot of times its like one more person had an issue than those that didnt.

    • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

      Bingo. If it wasn't good for you or effective body builders wouldn't be downing the things raw.

    • Indeed, the study is being reported in a scaremongering way. For example the risk being reported is an increase from 38 to 40 people out of 100 dying over 30 years. It also does not prove an association between eating eggs and cholesterol, it could be an association between fried breakfasts and cholesterol because people who eat fried breakfasts eat more eggs. So yes, it is just scaremongering. See more analysis here https://jamanetwork.com/journa... [jamanetwork.com]

  • Jeez (Score:5, Funny)

    by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:16PM (#58300158)

    In my 43 years eggs have gone from:

    1. Healthy
    2. Terrible. They will kill you!
    3. Maybe not so bad, cholesterol intake isn't what causes high cholesteral.
    4. Terrible! Three or more a week will kill you!

    Also dietary advice has gone from.

    1. Fat is good for you! Drink whole milk!
    2. Fat is the devil! Eat rice cakes.
    3. Actually, forget that last part. Carbs are the real problem.
    4. Well, if you eat fat you might lose weight but have a sick heart.
    5. The FDA food pyramid is for raising livestock! Eat real food.
    6. No carbs! Keto baby!

    What the hell are we supposed to do with this information? Seriously! No wonder there is such a distrust of experts in the USA!

    • As far as I can tell, dietary science is not science at all. There are a number of factors that are basically impossible to control for, and there's a deeply instilled idea of "you are what you eat" in the simplest interpretation. Ultimately, I just avoid added sugar, and mostly eat what I like. Worst case I'll die having enjoyed desert.

      • It is a type of science.
        But it doesn't accommodate for glycolysis vs ketosis balance, fasting vs small meals, calorie demand due physical activity vs diet size. And all of these are not checked against diet, properly.
        The reason it doesn't accommodate for these things is that very few students will be capable of affording long term restricted diets and physical workouts for test subjects. So you can take food, distill it, and make a few papers on the nutrients, and identify the work of the nutrients. But unl

    • My Doctor after last year:

      "Eat meat, more salads and eggs."

      I wish these experts would get on the same page #FFS

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      In my 43 years ... dietary advice has gone from.

      1. Fat is good for you! Drink whole milk!
      2. Fat is the devil! Eat rice cakes.
      3. Actually, forget that last part. Carbs are the real problem.

      You are too young to remember when protein was evil!.
      JH Kellog invented Corn Flakes as a healthier alternative to high-protein meat-based American breakfasts of the time, which he believed led to masturbation.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/p... [forbes.com]

      • Since I was a kid it has gone from:

        Masturbation will make you go blind
        Masturbation will make hair grow on your palms
        Masturbation will make you gay
        Don't ask, don't tell about masturbation
        Not masturbating 10 times a day will make you go blind and gay
    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I think I'll just wait till next week, when a new study shows that eggs are good for you again.

    • Re:Jeez (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:22PM (#58300700)
      As with all things, follow the money. Ancel Keys was the physiologist who HYPOTHESIZED that saturated fat caused cardiovascular disease. John Yudkin was a physiologist who was convinced processed sugar and carbohydrates was the culprit. In the 70's coconut oil was becoming increasingly popular with consumers. This alarmed US soybean farmers who's livelihood was tied to vegetable oils. They took Keys' hypothesis and through the soybean lobby presented it to the state and federal representatives. They also enlisted the aid of the American Heart Association (Not a government entity) in getting out the word that coconut oil will kill you! There are now peer reviewed scientific studies which show cholesterol does not cause cardiovascular disease. In fact it is cholesterol's job to fight inflammation which these studies proved does cause cardiovascular disease. Excess consumption of carbohydrates is linked to higher than normal inflammation. Keys' based his hypothesis on research that looked at people eating a hamburger and fries and vilified the greasy burger when the bun and fries were the real culprit. Disclaimer, this is extremely oversimplified so the TL;DR crew might actually read it.
    • And my local paper's "life" section has a couple of articles slamming low-carb diets.
    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      The only thing that people who show up in the news media are expert at is scaremongering to make money.

      Anybody who believes anything they see in mainstream news deserves the misery they're covered in.

    • Ignore it. Just like BMI, which has nothing to do with being fat.
    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      they DO make eggs that are from chickens fed a diet of Flax, so they are high in omega3

    • What the hell are we supposed to do with this information?

      Read the subtext and not the media reports. At no point has any scientific study discredited the "balanced diet" regardless of the efforts of the media to vilify individual food items.

  • Math fail (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FritzTheCat1030 ( 758024 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:19PM (#58300184)
    "People who eat an added three or four eggs a week or 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day" "a single large egg contains about 186 milligrams of cholesterol" So, if a single egg contains 186 mg of cholesterol, how does three or four eggs a week add up to 300 mg per day???
    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Eggs come in different sizes: regular, large, and jumbo. A large size egg has ~186mg cholesterol. A regular egg would have less, thus 3 or 4 equaling ~300mg.

    • It's fairly muddled in the article, and the summary here isn't much clearer. The last sentence in the summary is consistent with the below excerpt from the study [jamanetwork.com], which is clear that the researchers were measuring independent risks from (1) an additional 300 mg of cholesterol per week from any source, and (2) an additional 3-4 eggs per week.

      Findings Among 29615 adults pooled from 6 prospective cohort studies in the United States with a median follow-up of 17.5 years, each additional 300 mg of dietary cholesterol consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.17; adjusted absolute risk difference [ARD], 3.24%) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.18; adjusted ARD, 4.43%), and each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD (adjusted HR, 1.06; adjusted ARD, 1.11%) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.08; adjusted ARD, 1.93%).

    • by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @06:42PM (#58301186) Journal

      Most of the articles said something like three eggs a day which was more accurate. Some have said three or four a week. This is just a reflection on the quality of modern journalism, not the study.

      This study flies in the face of current wisdom. Dietary cholesterol has a weak link to blood cholesterol. The cholesterol in your blood is mostly manufactured in your liver from sugars. This has been clearly demonstrated by the effectiveness of statins which reduce your liver's production of cholesterol, not absorption of cholesterol from foods. If dietary cholesterol was the source of the problem, statins would be ineffective.

      Different people will have different results, but I have been able to reduce my LDL from 140 to below 70 by eliminating most sugars in my diet even though that forces me toward foods that raise dietary cholesterol. I took this approach when the side-effects of statins started accumulating. The results for myself prove that dietary cholesterol is not the problem. Eggs are one of the staples of my diet.

      It is remarkable that even supposed scientists continually make the mistake of believing that everything has a first order cause. Most human maladies are not so simple.

  • by Echoez ( 562950 ) * on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:21PM (#58300190)

    From everything you read about nutritional research, it's important to remember that unlike nearly all areas of science, they perform no actual rigorous research on this. Instead, it's meta-analysis of self-reported data that hunts and seeks patterns (instead of coming up with a hypothesis and then testing it).

    In many cases, it's meta-analysis of meta-analyses.

    In none of the nutritional research studies presented do they create control groups where they accurately measure and monitor all food consumed and report it over a lifetime. It's just nearly impossible. So instead, any sort of nutritional results get completely caught up with household income, other food being eaten, genetic predisposition and just plain garbage data.

    Perhaps people who eat 2+ eggs per day are having them via egg sandwiches with bacon, cheese and white bread while sipping coffee. The actual causes could be those other things (bacon, cheese, coffee) rather than the eggs themselves.

  • Not that big of a fan of eggs anyway.
  • It might be in the study but it's in none of the news reports. Hard-boiled? In omelette with sausage and bacon? As a "breakfast sandwich" from McDonald's. This would seem to be a huge factor. Also is it actually the eggs or some common cause? I don't expect much from news media but for a /. story, I'd like to see some of this answered.
    • It would seem to make a huge difference what eggs are eaten with, as they usually are consumed with other foods - you'd hope they would have controlled for that...

      • you'd hope they would have controlled for that...

        Which is pretty much impossible to do. There are some statistical methods to control for confounding variables, but they only work properly if all these variables are: 1) linear, 2) independent, and 3) time-invariant. In practice, none of these three conditions hold not even close. In addition, not all confounding variables are identified and measured, and the ones that are measured, aren't measured accurately (they use crude questionnaires)

        Of course, researchers can choose to ignore the limitations, and si

  • 21% death rate? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbritton ( 823086 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:28PM (#58300258)

    I think it's important to note that this study had a 21% death rate, that implies the participates where older individuals. Looking at the actual study, it says that the mean age at the start of the trial was 51.6 years old. The median study follow-up was 17.5 years, so the mean age at the end of the study was 69.1 years old.

    While this study is indeed interesting, I would like to see another study involving healthy young and middle aged adults.

  • by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:31PM (#58300274)

    Scientists Continue Waffling on Eggs

  • The actual study [jamanetwork.com] is paywalled.

  • by melted ( 227442 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:36PM (#58300328) Homepage

    If they weren't, the news would say "People who eat 3+ eggs a week also have higher risk of heart disease, but association w/ eggs disappears when controlling for other cholesterol intake."

    See https://twitter.com/juliaonjob... [twitter.com] for context.

  • Nutritional scientists keep trying to run correlation/population studies with these "controversial" foods.

    How 'bout this:
    - Gather a small group of people. Split into two groups.
    - Take blood samples.
    - Feed "group A" an egg. Feed "group B" no-cholesterol egg substitute.
    - Wait an hour.
    - Take blood samples
    - Wait another hour
    - Take blood samples
    - Wait 4 hours
    - Take blood samples
    - Thank the subjects for their time

    Now, go take your samples to a lab and measure serum cholesterol levels. You now have some pretty

  • This has got to be bogus.

    I eat at least a dozen eggs a week and I get a blood test every year.

    My LDL is 80 and my HDL 55 as per my last test.

    Eggs aren't doing anything to my cholesterol...

    • the study seems very flawed, not distinguishing between the known bad type of cholesterol and the kind found in eggs.

      Plenty of studies show no elevated level of bad cholesterol in blood form eggs, because they don't have nor cause LDL

  • by Suren Enfiajyan ( 4600031 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:49PM (#58300428)
    There are two kinds of cholesterols depending on the kind of cholesterol containers (lipoproteins) is cholesterol transported in: LDL (low-density lipoprotein), sometimes called “bad” cholesterol and HDL (high-density lipoprotein), or “good” cholesterol. Lipoproteins' walls, as you can guess from the name, are made of proteins. When your diet lacks proteins or has too much cholesterol compared to proteins, then your organism produces more low-density lipoproteins (LDL) which have greater capacity but much thinner walls. This is when the atherosclerosis starts. But when your diet contains enough proteins you'll be fine. Eggs have very high biological protein value among natural products and that amount of protein is much more than enough to compensate the cholesterol. This study might have methodological flaws since many other studies didn't show such findings, some even showed the opposite.
  • The people who told us about sun block were the same people who told us, when I was a kid, that eggs were good. So I ate a lot of eggs. Ten years later they said they were bad. I went, "Well, I just ate the eggs!" So I stopped eating eggs, and ten years later they said they were good again! Well, then I ate twice as many, and then they said they were bad. Well, now I'm really fucked! Then they said they're good, they're bad, they're good, the whites are good, the yellows - make up your mind! It's breakfast I've gotta eat!

    Lewis Black, The White Album

  • Did not RTFA, but a piece in the NY Times [nytimes.com] a few weeks ago talked about how the recollections and dietary logs of food study participants are unreliable. Studies rely on participants keeping a journal of everything they eat, over long periods of time. The accuracy of the study is only as accurate as the recollections and journal entries of those who are eating.
  • Everything in moderation; nothing in excess.

    Everything is going to kill you nowadays, might as well enjoy it.

  • by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @04:55PM (#58300472)

    This is one of many examples of the media taking a study and trumpeting grand conclusions that aren't supported by the data, or if they are, ignoring contradictory studies and potentially confounding variables (which might well have been discussed at length in the actual study). The problem isn't so much that these meta-analyses are being done- they might well be worthwhile to read for scientists looking for additional research topics, but the fact that they are being reported as if the grand council of science has weighed the evidence and come to a final definitive conclusion. This tends to undermine public trust in science. Worse, you see it in reporters who supposedly focus on science reporting. The problem is the media is in the business of attracting eyeballs, and an accurate report about one of these meta-analysis studies wouldn't attract many.

  • bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by molecular ( 311632 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:03PM (#58300564)

    "Eggs, specially the yolk, are a major source of dietary cholesterol,"

    so? Dietary cholesterol isn't the cause of heart heart desease. It's like saying: ban fire trucks, at every fire we see fire trucks, so they must be responsible for the fires.

    The study probably has problems with confounding factors: People who eat many eggs, ignoring dieteay advice, tend ot ignore other advice (like exercise, don't smoke and so on), which is the real reason for their higher/earlier death and disease events. This is just a guess, though. Didn't look.

    The dietary heart hypothesis has been debunked. It was fake news by the seed oil industry. Read Nina Teichholz.

  • ... just read "The Great Cholesterol Con" by Dr Malcolm Kendrick. https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/... [drmalcolmkendrick.org]

    Although it's sufficient to know that, long before his death, Ancel Keys, who was responsible for the whole "cholesterol" scare, had placed on record his considered opinion that:

    1. Dietary cholesterol has no effect on blood cholesterol.

    2. Blood cholesterol has no effect on mortality or cardio-vascular disease.

  • "People who eat an added three or four eggs . . ."

    Added to what? More eggs? Susan Scutti, CNN writer needs a grammar review, but the report is much worse than that:

    Dietary cholesterol is largely unrelated to cholesterol circulating in the body. Many of us can eat cholesterol till it's coming out our ears and have no problem. But some people's bodies insist upon having high cholesterol, even if they eat very little. This should have been known by every health worker in the last decade or two.

  • by jd ( 1658 )

    You can't increase cholesterol by eating it. Eggs have no impact on your cholesterol level. We've known that for over a decade.

    One study seemingly contradicting decades of research isn't significant. Show me the evidence and the significance level.

    Cholesterol is produced by the body, it cannot be absorbed in any significant amount.

    Odds are, what they're seeing is a correlation between some unhealthy breakfasts and other unhealthy behaviours linked to high bad cholesterol.

  • Repeat after me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jody Bruchon ( 3404363 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @05:58PM (#58300938)
    Repeat after me: "dietary cholesterol has no statistically significant effect on serum cholesterol." Take your bullshit study and shove it. "Doctor" (scare quotes because he had a doctorate but was turbo full of shit) Ancel Keys could almost single-handedly be blamed for the abysmal state of the American diet today. [drcate.com] All evidence presented since Ancel Keys's time show that eggs are one of the absolute best things you can possibly consume, especially the yolk. [healthline.com] I'm so sick of this bullshit. Saturated fats are good for you, unsaturated fats are not so good for you, eggs are extremely good for you, red meat is extremely good for you, simple sugars and refined carbohydrates are the worst thing you can eat, carbs in general are only good for you in small, limited amounts, and low-fat foods have poor satiety which leads to overeating (ignoring the fact that many low-fat foods have added sugar to make up for the lost taste.)

    Any study that says eggs will kill you faster is pulling a big fat "correlation = causation" fallacy. My best guess is that the guys who died earlier and ate more eggs also ate a lot more biscuits and cereal and extra slices of toast with jelly, but hey now, let's not control for THAT shit, guys, we're ONLY interested in a headline. They even say in the damn study that they cobbled together piles of data from six different places that were collected starting from 1985, but I have no way of discovering how that data was collected or what it contained or what they controlled for because the actual study text is locked up behind a fucking paywall like so much science seems to be.
  • I'm retired, work out 3 days a week, I eat cereal those days (fast, cheap, and don't sit in my gut FTW). Saturdays I hang with a group of old farts, we usually end up eating breakfast together. I alternate between an omelette and a burger. The other 3 days? 2 egg omelettes. Colorado, asparagus and feta, shrimp, mushroom and cheese, whatever. I cycle around them. I also sometimes get into poached, fried, or scrambled eggs.

    In other words, in my mind my choice is either packaged cereal (fast, cheap),
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Unless the study participants were locked in a room and fed a controlled diet what they reported is highly suspect in terms of accuracy.

    They have no idea what these people are actually doing in their lives to affect their health. This so called study was about as accurate as an internet survey.

    Hell if I vigorously jerk off twice a day and like to drink energy drinks I have a greater increase than what their so called study found in terms of cardiovascular causes of morbidity. Pretty sure most people w

  • Most research into diet involves Medical Reductionism, which means the study changes some one thing in the diet and measures what happens. But that's irrelevant (as a way to measure things) because only a substantial change in the diet is actually meaningful. Read the works by doctors Steven Gundry ("Plant Paradox") and David Perl mutter ("The Grain Brain") to understand a meaningful change and read T Colin Campbell ("The China Study" to understand the pernicious effect of medical reductionism. There has

  • "Eggs, specially the yolk, are a major source of dietary cholesterol,"

    It is the yoke. All of the cholesterol is in the yoke, as it is fat soluble, and the white contains no fat. This whole piece should be specifically talking about "egg yokes", the whites are fine.

  • by antdude ( 79039 )

    We should stop eating, drinking, breathing, etc.

  • The liver produces upwards of 1-2 g/day of cholesterol on its own, quite a bit more than the cholesterol in a few a couple eggs.

    What's probably more interesting here is the oil used to cook these eggs. Things like canola oil and vegetable oil are high in Omega-6 and are inflammatory in the body.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the actual culprit here was the fairly unnatural oils the eggs were cooked in.

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