Unscrambling the Egg Myth

Excerpts from ReachMD interview conducted by Dr Larry Kaskell. Full  transcript available here: http://www.reachmd.com/downloadTranscript.aspx?sid=3669

Introduction:

MISCONCEPTIONS THAT MANY PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT EATING EGGS
For the past 20 years Americans have been ordering egg white omelets and eating egg free substitutes like crazy under the false belief that eating eggs will somehow increase their risk of coronary artery disease or strokes.

I am Dr. Larry Kaskel, your host. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Kritchevsky, Director of the J. Paul Sticht Center at Wake Forest University and we are going to talk about how eating eggs daily does not actually have a significant impact on blood cholesterol or heart disease risk.

DR. LARRY KASKEL:
Well, tell me what you know about eggs and their impact if any on heart disease risk?

DR. STEPHEN KRITCHEVSKY:
Sure, I think there has been a number of what we call epidemiologic studies or observational studies of impact of diet on the onset of heart disease in people of various ages and many of these have looked at particular food groups and over the last 20 or 30 years and the result has been relatively and fairly consistent and the better the study, the more clear this is that the consumption of eggs seems to have no association with the onset of heart disease.

DR. LARRY KASKEL:
And how about the eating of eggs even dramatically or even insignificantly raising LDL cholesterol levels?

DR. STEPHEN KRITCHEVSKY:
There have been a number of clinical trials, carefully controlled feeding experiments where they give some people eggs, some people are given the same eggs without the yolks, and then to look at the effect of egg consumption on cholesterol and typically what they find is if they give people 2 or 3 extra eggs a day, they might see a small 2% perhaps increase in cholesterol though there is some genetic component.

There are some people who don’t seem to see any effect and other people who may see as much as a 5% increase, but when we take this to human populations and the free living populations and survey people and look at what they eat and compare that to their cholesterol levels, we find typically either no association or in many situations an inverse association such that people, who are eating more eggs actually have lower cholesterol levels than people, who are not eating eggs.