To Egg or Not to Egg?

That’s today’s question. This Memo was driven by another provocative headline from a university press release: “Groundbreaking study finds eggs don’t harm heart health” published in SciTech Daily. I think most informed healthcare professionals have known for a while that there’s little to no relationship between cardiovascular disease and dietary cholesterol from eggs and other animal sources—at least for most people.

Researchers in Australia decided to investigate how much dietary cholesterol from eggs, saturated fat, and a low-fat diet would impact a variety of blood lipid levels. While they measured at least 50 variables related to cardiovascular disease, they focused on LDL cholesterol. They recruited 61 healthy people, 48 of whom completed the 15-week study. In a random order, each subject spent five weeks on one of the following diets (note the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat in each diet):

The control diet had high cholesterol and high saturated fat; it mimicked the typical Australian diet, which is similar to the typical American diet. They were limited to one egg per week.

The EGG diet had high cholesterol but low saturated fat, plus two eggs per day.

The EGG-Free diet had low cholesterol and high saturated fat with no eggs.

What did they find when they compared how people did on each diet? Those on the EGG diet averaged 6 mg/dl lower LDL-cholesterol than either the EGG-free diet or the control diet. The EGG-free diet that was high in saturated fat resulted in the highest LDL cholesterol. Even with no additional eggs, the control diet still had higher LDL than the EGG diet.

Does this give the egg a free pass when it comes to blood lipids? Can the lead author really state, “We’ve delivered hard-boiled evidence in defense of the humble egg”? I’ll let you know on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?