A friend of mine (her name shall be omitted to protect the innocent) posted an article on how eggs cause atherosclerosis. As a result, I decided to do some research and break down what I found to be a highly misleading article, which I shall include for the sake of accurately representing the article.
First off, a little research led me to discover that the writer of the original article (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/eggs-vs-cigarettes-in-atherosclerosis/) had completely blown the study out of proportion. The study in question, which stated that people who consumed egg yolks were more likely to cause atherosclerosis, was interpreted by the author of the aforementioned article to be evidence that eating eggs at all is as likely to cause atherosclerosis as smoking cigarettes. After having read that, I decided to dig a bit deeper.
The first thing I decided to do was to look at the article itself and understand what was going on. In all honesty, that is the most important place to look because getting opinions based on what was said can be exaggerated, hearsay, or misinterpreted, which is less likely to happen if you go straight to the source. One thing that impressed me about reading this article in particular was the amount of attention to detail when pointing out their own flaws.
The authors specifically state that they need to do more research than just surveying, which can be exceptionally inaccurate because people do not always properly report their actual food consumption; oftentimes, people will cut their portions down or exaggerate their consumption of what they perceive to be healthy foods. A great example of this error is the garbage project at the University of Arizona, where one of the major findings was that people's self reporting and actually sifting through people's garbage yielded two very different results. Next, they state that they did not take exercise into account; this can be problematic as exercise is an important factor in vascular health as opposed to only diet. Finally, they specifically state they failed to take into account other sources of saturated fats. As someone who used to work in a restaurant, I can tell you that people make some really bizarre decisions with their health. People will often pair an egg white omelet with potatoes fried in oil or a highly caloric baked good because they think the egg whites negate the properties of the other foods. Others will pair scrambled egg whites with a whole milk latte, which contains a great deal of saturated fat.
What shocked me the most had nothing to do with the article itself, but rather with how the article was presented by journalists. The journalists who wrote the Los Angeles Times article clearly exaggerated the amount of impact of eggs on overall human health and also failed to mention the conservative measures the authors mentioned as to other underlying causes of their findings. The video my friend sent went a step further to state that all egg consumption is bad.
While I do not recommend looking at the comments section of articles for quality information, in the case of looking over the site my friend shared, it was to my benefit. A fellow skeptic posted a meta-analysis of all articles discussing eggs and atherosclerosis. This article examined pertinent articles from January of 1966 to June of 2012 to try and find a correlation between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease. The data was analyzed and re-analyzed using several different methods of plotting and statistical examinations. Through all this analysis, no correlation was found between heart attack, stroke, or eggs. However, they did admit that diabetics appear to have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes when they consume eggs than do people who are not diabetic, and they state this needs to be further studied as it is an overlooked area of research.
Furthermore, we need to look at the anthropological research. As you can imagine, my research in archaeology always comes forward to the modern era. Through looking at the remains of what people leave behind (including their bodies themselves), we can get a more accurate image of ourselves. In an examination of 137 mummies from all over the world who lived in populations spanning 4000 years, 47 mummies showed evidence of atherosclerosis, several of whom were from hunter-gatherer populations. Of the 47 who showed evidence, 25 definitely had it. Of these populations, only one consumed eggs as a regular part of their diet. This study suggests that this is something that is just part of our aging process and is not attributable to diet at all.
If looking this over should tell you anything, it's that human health is exceptionally complicated. Nothing is ever black and white or perfectly straightforward. Atherosclerosis is no exception. My advice after reading this is to be conservative in what you eat in the sense of using moderation, but also take everything you read about nutrition with a grain of salt. Above all else, do your homework.
Works Cited
Rong, Ying et al
2013 Egg Consumption and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: Dose Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies BMJ
Spence, David J. et al
2012 Egg Consumption and Carotid Plaque Atherosclerosis Vol. 24 No. 2
Thompson, Randal et al
2013 Atherosclerosis Across 4000 Years of Human History: the Horus Study of Four Ancient Populations The Lancet Vol. 381 No. 9783 pp. 1211-1222
