It is an undeniable fact that eggs are a rich source of protein. As a matter of fact, it is one of the most highly consumed food items among both children and adults across the world; whether it is boiled, fried, baked or poached. Health watchers love boiled eggs whereas poached eggs are favored by most resorts and high end restaurants.
The debate about egg consumption being bad for cardiovascular health recently got revived, with thanks to a study published recently revealing a modest association between consumption of eggs and other dietary cholesterol rich items with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality of all causes.
This is something medical students studying at renown Caribbean medical universities studying to become dieticians and cardiologists are studying as well. Students studying to become dieticians have recommended eggs but in moderate consumption due to the warm climate of the Caribbean.
In the United States of America and Canada, everybody loves eggs.
Are eggs bad or good for human consumption?
It should be understood that eggs are a food item that is a source of cholesterol as a large egg weighing almost 50 grams can contain around 186 mgs of cholesterol. Effect of eggs on human health in terms of dietary cholesterol levels have been the subject of quite a lot of research over the previous five decades.
However, it has recently been assumed that such an effect is not as important as it was thought of previously.
For example, guidelines of many medical institutions and public health organizations in recent years have reduced the association of dietary association with cardiovascular disease (CVD). This was mentioned in the 2013 AHA/ACC guidelines for lifestyle and the 2015-2020 dietary guidelines for Americans.
In the year 2010, the American guidelines recommended consumption of less than 250mg of cholesterol in one day. However, recent recommendations of 2014 and 2015 did not specify any specific daily limit of such intake.
Such a change comes from the fact that cholesterol intake from eggs or other food items have not shown to raise levels of LDL-cholesterol in the bloodstream or raise the risk of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) as opposed to the dietary risk of saturated fat raising levels of LDL cholesterol in blood by a large margin. This raises the risk of a CVD.
Some studies have reported that dietary cholesterol does increase the risk of a cardiovascular disease while other studies reported a decrease in either a risk of CVD or no effect of such with higher consumption of such cholesterol.
Are there more studies conducted regarding the association of risk of a cardiovascular disease with egg consumption?
In 2015, a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies were unable to draw any conclusion about the risk of CVD associated with dietary cholesterol, mainly due to the heterogeneous nature of research as well as lack of precision in research methods in the research conducted.
Authors of the above mentioned study suggest that new cohort studies had precise admistments done carefully to predict what would be useful in assessing the relative effects of dietary cholesterol having a link with the risk of CVD.
This study is different and was published recently in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA). It does however show more methodological thoroughness which in particular has more precise categorization of the human diet’s components.
Other than that this study made it possible to isolate independent relationships between egg consumption or cholesterol from other sources of diet and the incidence of CVD. The associations of these research studies were also carefully compiled and many top-class analyses were conducted and presented.
Conclusion
The main aim of the study was establishing a relation of greater relation of either eggs or cholesterol rich food items with premature mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This association however uses a dose-relationship model which means for each additional 300 mg of cholesterol consumed daily, the risk of a CVD rises by 17 percent. The risk of all-cause mortality rises by 18% consequently.
On average, Americans consume around 195 mg of cholesterol each day (ie. 3 to 4 eggs a week). Now the culture of exercising daily has helped them beat cholesterol, CVD and obesity.
