I was surprised another day to hear from my wife that cholesterol in eggs is a pretty healthy thing according to a recent study.
Actually, such studies appear every year, but before turning to the recent one, let’s go to the history of the relationship between science and the food industry.
The first story took place in the 70s in the US. There was clear evidence that antibiotics, used for farm animals lead to the appearance of drug-resistant bacterias. Washington administration considered a ban on penicillin for animal illness prevention. Meat producers were very unhappy and promised to stop all financial support of further researches. As a result, the FDA commissioner was fired and all activity was halted. Even now, after 36 years it is still legal to place antibiotics in animal food.
Another story is about sugar consumption. In 2003 World health organization decided to issue commendation for sugar consumption limitations. Sugar producers demanded to stop this discussion and threatened to stop US contributions to WHO funding. As a result limit of 5% for sugar was weakened to 10%.
And now let’s turn to the latest study. One of the sponsors of the study is Egg Nutrition Center, and the conclusion is that one egg per day could reduce the risk of heart disease to 12%. And it can be true because egg yolk contains cholesterol as is. Harmful for your health is just low-density lipids (LDL): connection of protein molecule with cholesterol. In 2/3 of people, LDL increased at about 10 percent after consuming cholesterol with food. for them, benefits from eggs are overcoming risks, but in another part of the population (30%) LDL increases sharply, and following recommendations to eat eggs every day could be very harmful. That is why, latest FDA guideline recommends keeping cholesterol intake should be as low as possible.
Of course, eggs are not a poison for humans, but think twice before eat them every day.