
Associations of Egg Consumption with Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality - mathoff
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2728487
======
nightski
Oh great, another one of those bs self reporting nutritional studies over
super long periods of time. 17.5 years and they only followed up once from
what I can tell. Can you accurately report what you ate over the last 17.5
years?

Even over the past week can be difficult as I realized when I started tracking
my food in MyFitnessPal. Unless consistently tracking, it's pretty easy to be
very far off from what you actually eat.

That's assuming people are even trying to be accurate. Many look on the past
with rose tinted glasses and forget about indulgences and snacks.

These studies are plague on the industry and need to go away.

~~~
n8henrie
Are you suggesting that they didn't actually eat more eggs / cholesterol, but
some other factor that makes people statistically significantly more likely to
have CVD and die also makes people more likely to falsely report egg /
cholesterol consumption?

~~~
kazinator
An obvious factor to look at among the subjects would be body fat level.

Maybe many of those who consumed more eggs or cholesterol simply just ate
more.

If the study simply tracked calories, maybe _calories_ would be found to be
correlated with CVD risk.

Problem with that, you can't really track what some people eat for 30 years.

~~~
importantbrian
100% this. They don't control for lean mass or anything like that, so it's
hard to say if it's the cholesterol or simply overeating that is the problem.
I want to see a study where Calories and Macros are held the same but one
group eats more cholesterol than the other and see what those results look
like. Sadly those kinds of studies are very hard to do in the nutritional
space.

------
eternalny1
Choline is an extremely important element for health. Recent studies have
shown that it has a dramatic positive effect on fatty liver disease, other
ailments.

Egg yolk is a major source of choline. Fatty liver disease has seen a dramatic
increase since people have removed eggs from their diets.

This study is questionable as other commenters have mentioned. I'm not buying
the "eggs are bad" sentiment again.

------
dvh
Eggs. Every decade 180° turn. If you don't like this paper just wait.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
180° is no exaggeration!

------
kazinator
Eggs are often consumed with a heaping order of carbohydrates.

Are we talking eggs here? Or Egg McMuffins with side orders of hash browns,
drizzled with ketchup?

------
kennu
I wonder who funded this research?

Did it also account for frequent egg-eaters tendencies to maintain a
particular kind of diet regarding other foods, and other similar associations?

~~~
SubiculumCode
Right? Sausage and bacon seem likely culprits.

------
chiefalchemist
"Associations of Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Consumption"

Yes, eggs are good way to ingest cholesterol, but in the classic American
diet, they are certainly not the only way. It feels suspect for them to pull
eggs, and only eggs, into the spotlight.

------
skookum
Here's another study reaching the opposite conclusion:
[https://heart.bmj.com/content/104/21/1756](https://heart.bmj.com/content/104/21/1756)

The key difference is "Among US adults..." versus "Among Chinese adults..."

Hmmm, maybe it's not the eggs?

------
SubiculumCode
But I like eggs damnit.

Edit 1. My comment was made on a submission, which I did not think would gain
much notice. Oops. Low quality comment to the fore!

Edit 2. Really though, I eat a couple of eggs a day. I should scale it back
anyway, as a hedge, and eat non-traditional (In USA) breakfasts, like rice and
beans.

~~~
CamperBob2
How many times have they flip-flopped back and forth on eggs alone? It's easy
to get the impression that the people running these studies are either biased
or simply don't know what they're doing.

~~~
mywittyname
Beyond the prevalent bias, nutritional science is just hard. I doubt we'll
ever really get a handle on it.

It isn't ethical to lock people up and feed them a steady diet of something we
might thing is going to cause them to develop some disease. So we have to rely
on mostly self-reported data collected over extended periods of time.

That being said, I think the first pushback against eggs had to do with their
high amounts of cholesterol. It was original assumed that dietary cholesterol
intake was related to blood cholesterol levels. Which is something we now know
to be false.

However, eggs are very high in saturated fats. The American Heart Associate
still recommends that these be limited (from all sources) because there is a
good deal of evidence that saturated fat intake contributes to elevated LDL
cholesterol.

I generally trust AHA recommendations, but they are not free from bias, as
they have food companies as "corporate supporters."

------
ycombonator
Totally commonsensical theory. Just have eggs and coffee together. The effects
negate each other and while you are at it toss some garlic and olive oil in
the egg scramble. No need to thank me.

~~~
taborj
So, wait...the theory, then is to have...breakfast?

Sign me up.

------
theprotocol
Amid the neverending diet controversy it seems safest to do low carb (non-
keto), medium high-quality fat of which a majority is monounsaturated, medium
protein - and be aware not to reduce saturated fat too much as it's not that
scary after all, but also don't go overboard like some of the somewhat extreme
saturated fat advocates that have appeared in the last few years.

~~~
uhtred
Why low carb?

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Carbs = Sugar. Period, end of story. The key to good body composition is a
high protein, low carb (low sugar) diet. Avoid foods that spike insulin.

Anything else is hogwash, because calories are not calories.

~~~
mklingen
[needs citation]

~~~
n8henrie
Most people seriously interested in this topic should already be familiar with
the "insulin index" paper (was reposted to HN within the last couple weeks).

EDIT: Or maybe just 3 days ago? Seems like longer.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19369743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19369743)

------
stillbourne
I call bullshit. Classic case of correlation != causation.

------
ykevinator
I wonder if statins remove the additional risk.

