30 replies to this topic

[misterE]

[Gerrans]

I do not know what the risk of diabetes is in the first place, to put in context the claim that eating one egg a day increases diabetes risk by 75%. Most people in Britain eat eggs, so you would think from this that most people in Britain would get diabetes--but they do not. Last year's figures say that one in twenty people in the UK have diabetes--diagnosed or undiagnosed. That is not good, and diabetes rates are rising. But till fairly recently, the rate of egg consumption was declining here.

I am nearly 60 and have eaten at least one egg a day all my adult life. I have not got diabetes (yet), touch wood, but now you are fightening me. Am I doomed?

Edited by Gerrans, 02 January 2014 - 02:22 PM.

[Jeoshua]

I wonder how the other variables that would go along with this were controlled in these studies. Increased egg consumption could also be very easily associated with higher consumption of food, overall. Would the effects persist if the person ate ONLY eggs all day long? Were these eggs fried, scrambled, or sunny-side up? And would that change the results?

Personally I eat my eggs sunny side up, since that inactivates the avidin and keeps the choline and biotin contents available (and tastes great).

[mikela]

A few counterpoints for balance:

"The Great Cholesterol Myth"
"The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living"
http://www.examiner....r-s-and-obesity

[Jeoshua]

To add to that last point:

https://en.wikipedia.../French_paradox

It was assumed that the reason that the French do not have a high degree of heart disease was that they drink Red Wine, but that seems to not really be very accurate when put under intensive study. The real issue here is that medical science assumes that high cholesterol and fat is absolutely bad for you, when actually if you take the French Paradox into account, it seems that it is not the case.

In other words, these people in these studies ate eggs, and had a higher incidence of Diabetes. But is is really because of the eggs?

[Gerrans]

Apparently, the type of eggs used in the studies was Easter eggs.

[JohnD60]

funny stuff! Some researcher from a Lithuania University did a n=700 (and I don't understand the distinction between the 'controls' and the 'cases', it implies that many in the survey were pre selected based upon condition) survey of the Lithuania population, performed some undetailed adjustments for BMI, smoking, Family history of diabetes, and educational level (but apparently not age or sex), and determined that an egg consumption of 1-2 eggs a week increased the chance of type 2 diabetes by 76%. Then publishes it in some low rate nutrition journal. Only an ideolog would find this persuasive.

eta: found out that Michael Gregor, the doctor that did the youtube is a animal rights activist and paid Vegan nutrition coach. Shocker!, not

Edited by JohnD60, 02 January 2014 - 05:41 PM.

[misterE]

.

Michael Gregor, the doctor that did the youtube is a animal rights activist and paid Vegan nutrition coach. Shocker!, not

Don’t shoot the messenger, he is just reporting on the science.

[mikela]

Calling it science is the issue

[misterE]

Calling it science is the issue

What about the studies he showed, is that not science?

Edited by misterE, 06 April 2014 - 07:26 PM.

[Darryl]

Dr. Greger is sometimes guilty of cherry picking, but his primary cited study is not alone. A better, larger study found 5-6 eggs/wk increased diabetes risk in men by 46%.

I suspect the culprit may be the high choline content of the eggs. Plasma choline is associated with components of the metabolic syndrome like BMI, body fat %, waist:height ratio, triglycerides and glucose; and of all foods, plasma choline is most strongly associated with egg intake. A study from 2012 identified serum metabolites associated with diabetes risk. Higher diacyl-phosphatidylcholines, as well as phenylalanine (rich in egg whites), were associated with diabetes. Supporting the excess choline-diabetes link, low choline intake protects rats from high-fat diet induced diabetes.

The U.S. Food and Nutrition Board's recommendation for dietary choline (550 mg) may be unnecessarily high for most of the population. All we really know from the study they used is that 13 mg is not enough to prevent elevated serum alanine aminotranferase (ALT), while 700 mg prevented elevated ALT. The true requirement for most lies somewhere in that rather broad range, though there are apparently polymorphisms that impair choline metabolism. I get around 200 mg choline daily (much from beans & broccoli), though higher than average betaine intake probably reduces my requirement. My ALT was most recently near the low end of the normal range (11 IU/L), so for me, 200 mg appears to be enough.

Edited by Darryl, 07 April 2014 - 03:32 AM.

[nightlight]

Calling it science is the issue

What about the studies he showed, is that not science?

Leaping from correlations on non-randomized samples to causation, as done in the video, is a junk science. While such correlations are useful as initial hints or heuristics for further research using methods of hard science (experiments, randomized trials, etc) which can resolve the causality from confounding, using them in the manner done in the video, or similarly by variety of parasitic agenda peddlers in media, politics and education, is usually a pseudo-scientific cover for something el$e.

But one shouldn't ignore these kinds of "health" campaigns based on junk science, since there is a very useful bit of information in the mere fact that someone bent on driving such agenda (especially when it costs lots of money & efforts) had to resort to junk science -- it implies that, had they had any hard science in support of their claims, they would have surely not hidden it. This in turn implies that at best the hard science fails to support the agenda being hawked via junk science, and at worst shows exactly the opposite. Hence, a good rule of thumb, when one runs into such "health" campaign, is to head in the opposite direction from the one the junk science peddlers are trying to coral you toward. And the harder they push, the faster you should run the other way.

Some examples of such useful-information-carrying-campaigns (in the above sense) include push away from butter toward margarine (which has since been debunked), push toward low fat or low cholesterol diets, push against Acetyl-L-Carnitine or red meats, push against salt, push against coffee and chocolate (somewhat toned done lately), push against alcoholic beverages and a variety of illegal drugs (some are in the process of reversal), and finally, the hardest and the longest "health" war of them all, the one against the ancient panacea, tobacco.

[misterE]

According to my research, the main problem with eggs is the following:

 

 Arachidonic acid—naturally found in egg-yolks, higher concentrations in chickens fed corn and soybeans. Arachidonic-acid is oxidized into inflammatory hormones that affect nearly every cell in the body and contribute to oxidative damage.

 

 Saturated-fat—also found in egg-yolks, saturated-fats are very obesogenic, meaning they are very attracted to fat-cells (adipocytes). Overtime the excessive storage of saturated-fats causes the adipocytes to become insulin-resistant, leading to uncontrolled lipolysis, which leads to lipotoxicity and type-2 diabetes.

 

 Cholesterol—it is said that 1 egg contains more cholesterol than a bacon cheese-burger! Contrary to popular belief cholesterol in the diet, does in fact increase serum cholesterol, while this might be beneficial at certain times, having eggs as a regular part of the diet is likely to increase the total amount of cholesterol, which increases the overall amount of oxidative damage that occurs to cholesterol naturally.   

 

 Pollutants—Eggs are high on the food-chain. This means they are inevitably high in dioxins, pesticides, metals, antibiotics, and all sorts of chemicals. These chemicals accumulate in fat and are known carcinogens that interfere with hormonal function. They are blamed for causing the near extinction of the bald-eagle!

 

 Lack of fiber & phytonutrients—Eggs are lacking in certain nutrients like fiber and phytonutrients that are known to provide health and longevity. Dietary-fiber above all other nutrients is the most powerful anti-diabetes nutrient out there. Eggs are also very low in phytonutrients which provide antioxidant support and helps prevent cancer. Eggs, along with other animal-derived foods, don’t contain these beneficial substances whatsoever.

Edited by misterE, 08 April 2014 - 04:30 AM.

[Luminosity]

I don't believe that eggs increase the risk of diabetes.  People with agendas often try to demonize certain foods.  In the past people ate a lot more eggs than we do today and they had less diabetes.  

[bestbefore]

It's so clear to me that MisterE has an agenda and isn't remotely interested in an open and honest communication about food. It's been long proven that people who don't have any problems with cholesterol, shouldn't worry about eating eggs. They provide so much nutrients that are beneficial. Choose nutrient dense foods that aren't packaged and stop worrying so much about food. 

[Camel]

what eggs have been used for those studies? organic? free range? cage? i mean there are so many factors which could play an important role.

 

I am italian and I live in UK and i can surely say that from my experience in general here people do not seem to care much about what they eat. Seriously lot of people have no food/cooking principles. Lack of education regarding nutrition and dietary principles increase the chance of having a country full of people who just buy whatever without thinking double.

 

I guess its pretty much the same in big cities all around the world and maybe (actually, probably) its more about  the mediterranean traditions to eat beans, legumes, lots of extra virgin olive oil and simply cooked fish instead of saturated pruducts. Indeed, I consider the mediterranean diet the best one (balancing taste and health sides).

 

I believe one egg per day should be ok, if its organic and fried (red shouldn't reach high temperatures anyways).

[misterE]

I don't believe that eggs increase the risk of diabetes.  People with agendas often try to demonize certain foods.  In the past people ate a lot more eggs than we do today and they had less diabetes.  

 

 

 

Eggs are about 65% fat and don’t contain fiber. High-fat/low-fiber diets, which comprise most modern-industrial diets, are the number one risk factor for diabetes. The nutrient most associated with diabetes is total-fat intake, while the nutrient most associated with a decreased risk is soluble-fiber. Eating eggs adds more fat, and doesn’t give you any fiber… how is that suppose to help with diabetes?

 

Edited by misterE, 11 April 2014 - 05:05 PM.

[misterE]

It's so clear to me that MisterE has an agenda and isn't remotely interested in an open and honest communication about food.

 

 

It's been long proven that people who don't have any problems with cholesterol, shouldn't worry about eating eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

My agenda is to educate people and get them healthy; make the world a sustainable place. How are we suppose to tackle any of the world’s problems is everyone is obese, sick and diabetic?

 

 Many of the studys showing no harm or benefits to eating eggs are mostly funded by the egg-industry themselves. So the results are biased. Lots of studies; not funded by the egg-industry, show direct harm from consuming them.

Edited by misterE, 11 April 2014 - 05:12 PM.

[rwac]

Eggs are about 65% fat and don’t contain fiber. High-fat/low-fiber diets, which comprise most modern-industrial diets, are the number one risk factor for diabetes. The nutrient most associated with diabetes is total-fat intake, while the nutrient most associated with a decreased risk is soluble-fiber. Eating eggs adds more fat, and doesn’t give you any fiber… how is that suppose to help with diabetes?

 

You seem to be blaming Eggs for the entire diet, as though someone would eat eggs exclusively. Eggs are a miniscule part of total-fat intake and provides a lot of nutrients like cholesterol (hormones!), vitamin A, B12 etc.

 

 

 

My agenda is to educate people and get them healthy; make the world a sustainable place. How are we suppose to tackle any of the world’s problems is everyone is obese, sick and diabetic?

 Many of the studys showing no harm or benefits to eating eggs are mostly funded by the egg-industry themselves. So the results are biased. Lots of studies; not funded by the egg-industry, show direct harm from consuming them.

 

I hope you realize that those 2 goals are not the same, and they might well diverge. Just because high-fat diets are bad, doesn't mean that eating some quantity of meat or eggs is necessarily bad.

 

Pollutants are a reasonable argument, but the answer is to eat good quality (organic?) eggs, not to avoid them.

 

Not all foods need to have fiber and "phytonutrients", and not all phytonutrients are good in the first place.

[maxwatt]

My yoga teacher told me it was ok to eat eggs, but not too many.  I asked what was too many, and he said "when you start growing feathers, stop."

 

 

[timar]

...and finally, the hardest and the longest "health" war of them all, the one against the ancient panacea, tobacco.

 

 

You raised some good points in your post (albeit in a onesided and overly zelous manner), but that last sentence pretty much devaluates everything you wrote.

 

Your "ancient panacea" is killing hundreds of thousands of people each year. If you deny the vast amount of irrefutable evidence for that, you are a dyed-in-the-wool crackpot.

 

Edited by timar, 13 April 2014 - 09:26 AM.

[Camel]

 

It's so clear to me that MisterE has an agenda and isn't remotely interested in an open and honest communication about food.

 

 

It's been long proven that people who don't have any problems with cholesterol, shouldn't worry about eating eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

My agenda is to educate people and get them healthy; make the world a sustainable place. How are we suppose to tackle any of the world’s problems is everyone is obese, sick and diabetic?

 

 Many of the studys showing no harm or benefits to eating eggs are mostly funded by the egg-industry themselves. So the results are biased. Lots of studies; not funded by the egg-industry, show direct harm from consuming them.

 

 

if you really would like to make a sustainable world, then u should support the consumption of eggs.  eggs are about 70% water, the rest is fat and proteins (pretty much).
 

[mikela]

In the links I posted above there is good discussion (see "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living") on insulin resistance (IR) and low carb diets.  Specifically they mention the Triglyceride to HDL-C ratio as being a good indicator of IR.  

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/16054467

 

I used to be a vegan who transitioned to a ketogenic diet.  I wanted to compare this ratio and recently got my results in.  Vegan = 2.3.  Keto = 1.5.  I mention this here because I eat about 2 eggs (free range) every other day on the keto diet as well as several slices of bacon (uncured, nitrate free).  My HDL doubled on the keto diet.

Edited by mikela, 15 April 2014 - 05:31 PM.

[misterE]

 

You seem to be blaming Eggs for the entire diet, as though someone would eat eggs exclusively. Eggs are a miniscule part of total-fat intake and provides a lot of nutrients like cholesterol (hormones!), vitamin A, B12 etc.

 

 

I hope you realize that those 2 goals are not the same, and they might well diverge. Just because high-fat diets are bad, doesn't mean that eating some quantity of meat or eggs is necessarily bad.

 

Pollutants are a reasonable argument, but the answer is to eat good quality (organic?) eggs, not to avoid them.

 

Not all foods need to have fiber and "phytonutrients", and not all phytonutrients are good in the first place.

 

 

Adding eggs to the diet does add some nutrients but it also adds a bunch of negatives, which I have mentioned. Adding eggs to the diet will increase the fat-percentage and dilute out the fiber content, which is not beneficial for diabetes. Doctor Joel Wallach claims that people should eat eggs every day!

 

I think the two goals are Inseparable because if we eat a diet that is destroying the earth, we are all doomed no matter what. Could it be that the same diet that reverses diabetes and heart-disease also benefits the earth?

 

Pollutants are unavoidable. Dioxins and PCB's have been found even in the north and south poles. The only way to avoid them is to eat low on the food chain, or eat only the egg-white.

 

I think that the more fiber and phytonutrients the better. In fact, the lack of both fiber and phytonutrients is probably one of the largest contributors to cancer and diabetes in America, where the diet is refined, processed and also full of animal-products, which on’t contain these beneficial elements. Phytonutrients were believed to be a plant defense mechanism, but humans over the years became adapted to them and now since our bodies are so used to getting them, they seem to provide health-benefits like antioxidant activity and cancer protection.

 

.

 

 

 

if you really would like to make a sustainable world, then u should support the consumption of eggs.  eggs are about 70% water, the rest is fat and proteins (pretty much).
 

 

 

 

Maybe by weight, but not by calorie. 65% of the CALORIES in eggs comes from fat.

 

[misterE]

 

 

 My HDL doubled on the keto diet.

 

Dean Ornish (the doctor who reverses heart-disease by putting people on a very low fat vegetarian diet) noted that eating less fat causes all fraction of cholesterol to go down including HDL. And that a high-carb diet also increases triglycerides. But even thou that happens, he was still able to lower total-cholesterol below 150mg/dl and reverse heart-disease.

 

Many folks think that in order to reverse heart-disease, you need to get total-cholesterol below 150. Populations of people who have low rates of heart-disease tend to not only have lower total-cholesterol but also lower HDL than the average American,

[Camel]

so in summary, can we list positive and negs of eating organic free range eggs?

[mikela]

 

 

 

 My HDL doubled on the keto diet.

 

Dean Ornish (the doctor who reverses heart-disease by putting people on a very low fat vegetarian diet) noted that eating less fat causes all fraction of cholesterol to go down including HDL. And that a high-carb diet also increases triglycerides. But even thou that happens, he was still able to lower total-cholesterol below 150mg/dl and reverse heart-disease.

 

Many folks think that in order to reverse heart-disease, you need to get total-cholesterol below 150. Populations of people who have low rates of heart-disease tend to not only have lower total-cholesterol but also lower HDL than the average American,

 

 

Although I have read "The China Study" (now debunked), Esselstyn's book on reversing heart disease, etc., the notion that total cholesterol is the villain has been dispelled as noted in the links I provided.  My own results as an ex vegan also support that.  Eliminating sugar and processed flour (and carbs in general) will go along way to making one "heart attack proof" (to use Esselstyn's words).

Edited by mikela, 21 April 2014 - 01:50 AM.

[Darryl]

Apologies for adding to the off topic digression.

 

More should be aware of this interview with William Castelli of the Framingham Heart Study, full of morsels like, "Michael Brown of Dallas there with Goldstein, one of the Nobel laureate folks, he used to say if your LDL was under 90 or 80 you didn't need HDL. Well I don't think that's true but if you're a lot lower than that, you probably don't need HDL." HDL still remains meaningful for those who can't get their LDL levels down to the 50-70 range we're adapted to.

 

@misterE

 

Ornish's lifestyle trial was only able to lower TC to 4.45 mmol/l  = 172 mg/dl, close to the markers obtained by Pritikin (I hovered at 167 after 3 years moderately low fat vegan). Esselstyn prescribed lovastatin and sometimes cholestyramine to get levels below the 150 mg/dl TC threshold that conferred ischemic heart disease near-immunity in Framingham.

 

Just pointing out that diet alone probably won't be enough to write CVD off as a threat, even in the motivated. Age and our past transgressions take their toll.

[mikela]

It is LDL particle size and count that is important not the total LDL level.  Small dense LDL particles have been associated with inflamation of blood vessel walls while large fluffy LDL particles are considered benign.  Carbohydrates tend to drive up the count of small dense particles while healthy fats do not.

Edited by mikela, 21 April 2014 - 05:52 PM.

[mikela]

A couple of publications to support my position:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/10499189

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/19082851

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/16166563

 

Edited by mikela, 21 April 2014 - 06:14 PM.