ARE YOU READY FOR SOMETHING EGGSEPTIONAL?
This is a test of your ability to persevere during a time when your mind is no doubt flying in every direction. We need to get away from the beer-virus for a few moments and focus on a different kind of question. Thus I have decided to share with you a less serious but important quandary about “eggs”! You must read through to the end to make your decision! Hang in there!
I just read an article that dealt with the above question. Is eating eggs on a regular basis a good thing or a bad thing? I am just providing quotes from the article that attempted to answer the question. I leave it to my astute readers to decide: are eggs good for you or bad for you? Read on and try to extract an answer - unless you have something more meaningful to do - like sleep or watch TV.
- For decades, eating eggs has also been controversial due to their high cholesterol content – which some studies have linked to an increased risk of heart disease. One egg yolk contains around 185 milligrams of cholesterol, which is more than half of the 300mg daily amount of cholesterol that the US dietary guidelines recommended until recently. Does that mean eggs, rather than an ideal food, might actually be doing us harm?
- Researchers haven’t definitively linked the consumption of cholesterol to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. As a result, US dietary guidelines no longer have a cholesterol restriction; nor does the UK.
- Maria Luz Fernandez, professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Connecticut in the US, whose latest research found no relationship between eating eggs and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
- In a 2015 review of 40 studies, Johnson and a team of researchers couldn’t find any conclusive evidence on the relationship between dietary cholesterol and heart disease.
- Some cholesterol may actually be good for us. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol travels to the liver, where it’s broken down and removed from the body. HDL is thought to have a protective effect against cardiovascular disease by preventing cholesterol from building up in the blood.
- Researchers looked at data from 30,000 adults followed for an average of 17 years and found that each additional half an egg per day was significantly linked to a higher risk of heart disease and death. (They controlled for the subjects’ diet patterns, overall health, and physical activity to try to isolate the effects of eggs.)
- Numerous studies suggest eggs are good for heart health. One previous analysis of half a million adults in China, published in 2018, even found that egg consumption was associated with a lower risk of heart disease. Those who ate eggs every day had an 18% lower risk of death from heart disease and 28% lower risk of stroke death compared to those who didn’t eat eggs.
- We do know some ways in which eggs could affect our risk of disease. One way is through a compound in eggs called choline, which may help protect us against Alzheimer’s disease. It also protects the liver.
- Meanwhile, scientists are beginning to understand other health benefits of eggs. Egg yolks are one of the best sources of lutein, a pigment that has been linked to better eyesight and lower risk of eye disease, for example.
So what is the answer, Yay or Nay? I am personally quite confused!
2 comments:
Hi Ken,
A few other kwestions to konsider...
Does the nutritional value of an egg depend on what the hen has been eating? If eggs can affect our health then surely a hen's food can affect its health. Grain-fed cows produce quite different beef to grass-fed and so it's reasonable to assume that an egg-laying hen's diet might also affect the nutritional content of an egg.
You know when a recipe says, 'add three eggs', how big should the eggs be? Shouldn't a recipe say 'add 200 grams of egg'?
Are boiled eggs healthier than fried, poached, or scrambled eggs?
Should you fry eggs in butter, olive oil, or mutton fat?
When you make an omelette, should you separate the yolk and white and whisk the white and fold it carefully into the beaten yolks and is the final product worth the French faffing about?
Is it an omelette if there's no cheese in it? Or is that going too far down the soufflé route?
What is that muck that hotels serve in the breakfast buffet and call scrambled eggs?
And when you're in Leh, in North India at 3500 metres above sea level, gasping for oxygen and arguing with a still seriously somersaulting stomach from 2 days in Delhi, is curried eggs a good way to start the day?
And lastly, should you ever try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs? (And what does that even mean?)
AS usual your astute mind and insights have extended my trite little blog to a new dimension. I will pass your questions on to other readers in search of some answers. Thanks for the stimulating queries!
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