Higher egg and cholesterol consumption hikes heart disease
 

Should I be concerned? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...90315110858.htm

Date: March 15, 2019
Source: Northwestern University
Summary:
Cancel the cheese omelet. A large, new study of nearly 30,000 people reports adults who ate more eggs and dietary cholesterol had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death from any cause. People need to consume lower amounts of cholesterol to have a lower risk of heart disease, the study authors said.

There is sobering news for egg lovers who have been happily gobbling up their favorite breakfast since the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans no longer limited how much dietary cholesterol or how many eggs they could eat.

A large, new Northwestern Medicine study reports adults who ate more eggs and dietary cholesterol had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death from any cause.

"The take-home message is really about cholesterol, which happens to be high in eggs and specifically yolks," said co-corresponding study author Norrina Allen, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "As part of a healthy diet, people need to consume lower amounts of cholesterol. People who consume less cholesterol have a lower risk of heart disease."

Egg yolks are one of the richest sources of dietary cholesterol among all commonly consumed foods. One large egg has 186 milligrams of dietary cholesterol in the yolk.

Other animal products such as red meat, processed meat and high-fat dairy products (butter or whipped cream) also have high cholesterol content, said lead author Wenze Zhong, a postdoctoral fellow in preventive medicine at Northwestern.

The study will be published March 15 in JAMA.

The great debate

Whether eating dietary cholesterol or eggs is linked to cardiovascular disease and death has been debated for decades. Eating less than 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day was the guideline recommendation before 2015. However, the most recent dietary guidelines omitted a daily limit for dietary cholesterol. The guidelines also include weekly egg consumption as part of a healthy diet.

An adult in the U.S. gets an average of 300 milligrams per day of cholesterol and eats about three or four eggs per week.

The study findings mean the current U.S. dietary guideline recommendations for dietary cholesterol and eggs may need to be re-evaluated, the authors said.

The evidence for eggs has been mixed. Previous studies found eating eggs did not raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. But those studies generally had a less diverse sample, shorter follow-up time and limited ability to adjust for other parts of the diet, Allen said.

"Our study showed if two people had exact same diet and the only difference in diet was eggs, then you could directly measure the effect of the egg consumption on heart disease," Allen said. "We found cholesterol, regardless of the source, was associated with an increased risk of heart disease."

Exercise, overall diet quality and the amount and type of fat in the diet didn't change the association between the dietary cholesterol and cardiovascular disease and death risk.

The new study looked at pooled data on 29,615 U.S. racially and ethnically diverse adults from six prospective cohort studies for up to 31 years of follow up.

It found:

Eating 300 mg of dietary cholesterol per day was associated with 17 percent higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease and 18 percent higher risk of all-cause deaths. The cholesterol was the driving factor independent of saturated fat consumption and other dietary fat.
Eating three to four eggs per week was associated with 6 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease and 8 percent higher risk of any cause of death.
Should I stop eating eggs?

Based on the study, people should keep dietary cholesterol intake low by reducing cholesterol-rich foods such as eggs and red meat in their diet.

But don't completely banish eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods from meals, Zhong said, because eggs and red meat are good sources of important nutrients such as essential amino acids, iron and choline. Instead, choose egg whites instead of whole eggs or eat whole eggs in moderation.

"We want to remind people there is cholesterol in eggs, specifically yolks, and this has a harmful effect," said Allen, who cooked scrambled eggs for her children that morning. "Eat them in moderation."

How the study was conducted

Diet data were collected using food frequency questionnaires or by taking a diet history. Each participant was asked a long list of what they'd eaten for the previous year or month. The data were collected during a single visit. The study had up to 31 years of follow up (median: 17.5 years), during which 5,400 cardiovascular events and 6,132 all-cause deaths were diagnosed.

A major limitation of the study is participants' long-term eating patterns weren't assessed.

"We have one snapshot of what their eating pattern looked like," Allen said. "But we think they represent an estimate of a person's dietary intake. Still, people may have changed their diet, and we can't account for that."

Victor W. Zhong et al. Associations of Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Consumption With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality. JAMA, 2019 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2019.1572

The study was supported in part by the American Heart Association and by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grants R21 HL085375, HHSN268201300046C, HHSN268201300047C, HHSN268201300049C, HHSN268201300050C, HHSN268201300048C of the National Institutes of Health.

How on earth can this have any validity at all?? One recollection of what they ate in a month or a year? And now they're reporting on the outcome years later on the difference in consumption of half an egg? (Other articles I've read about this mentioned specifically a half egg.)

What am I missing? How is this not complete nonsense?

It is complete nonsense. But a lot of people only read headlines.

Given the long period of time when egg consumption was thought to be unhealthy due to higher cholesterol content and the concurrent recommendations to reduce egg consumption or eat egg whites, what is wrong with this study? Oh right, it's based on an epidemiological framework that can only identify an association. Many other variables involved in addition to the inaccurate data gathering techniques render these claims unfounded.

But choline isn't found in the egg white. It's in the yolk. Personally I'm putting all my eggs in one basket...and then eating them all. :yum:

Another good rebuttal from Dr Scher:

Eggs are bad – then good – then bad again? What gives?

https://www.dietdoctor.com/eggs-are...gain-what-gives

One quote

Anybody else think this is just all part of a campaign by the cereal companies to fight back against sinking sales? The older I get, the less I trust the establishment news. I'm turning into a real conspiracy nut. :lol:

Someone on another forum mentioned something to the effect of "The 80's called, and wants their food scares back!"

It's important to note though that the 31 years this is based on after the one time food questionnaire is mostly the time during which eggs were shunned for their high cholesterol content.

Another pointless "study".

No wait - there's a point: scaring people off eggs again, no matter how unfounded the reasoning.

I was watching a morning news show this past weekend when this egg story came up. The news hosts bantered back and forth a bit before reading the report with comments like 'So eggs are bad for you again? Really?' Then one of the hosts read the headline bullet points from the teleprompter just like all of the news outlets did. Then she finished up the story with an OP ED comment "Don't believe it. Eggs are good for you!"

I spent a lot of time in graduate school learning how to both design scientific studies and critique the designs of scientific studies. This study is not science it is propaganda.

Love it. Thanks to the internet, rebuttals from respected doctors and LC websites are also read widely within days. This bad study, or the one on A-Fib, or keto crotch or the keto will kill you articles only show how bad epidemiology studies are. JAMA should be ashamed for publishing this.

You are not paranoid if it’s true.

Look at what the tobacco companies did for decades.

I’m with you Zei. I’m putting all my eggs in a basket and eating them every morning. This is complete nonsense. They expected ppl to remember a month or a year previously, of what they ate. Heck I have trouble remembering what I eat when logging in my foot for the entire day! 🤣

I love this forum! Perpetual reality check.

Does anyone else here remember the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR)? Is it still going on? In about 2001, I was excited about maintaining my 50lb weight loss for five years, and dutifully sent in my Food Diary. This was just before I gave up on calorie-counting and went full throttle to Atkins. I received one follow-up diary questionnaire, which was so biased against my actual way of eating I couldn't even answer it. NEVER was my sustainable success on LC included in subsequent reports on this study.

Many of us here actually CAN report every morsel we've eaten for months, because we keep detailed diaries here or in Fitday (or on some App) as a helpful strategy. But really. Who does that in the real world? :lol:

Been there, done that. No thank you.

From what I've read, this statement wasn't actually proven out by this study. What they showed was that 1) adults who ate more eggs had higher cholesterol and 2) their data showed a correlation (not causation) between eating eggs and higher risk of death. They are claiming that people had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease because they had higher cholesterol, not because they ate eggs. It's something of a leap. Especially since the link between cholesterol and heart disease has been pretty much put to bed. Keep in mind that most people that eat eggs are eating the SAD, so there are lots of other correlating factors: high carb diets, T2D, etc. Not to mention a little bit of guilt, aka stress, aka cortisol, every time they eat a $%&# egg, because of stupid stories like this.