Health & Fitness
A New “Egg War” Has Begun
The benefits and dangers of eating eggs have been debated for decades and the "Egg Wars" are now back in the news, but who is right?
A study published March 19, 2019 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concluded that eating three or more eggs a week, significantly increases the probability of heart disease and premature death:
“Among US adults, higher consumption of dietary cholesterol or eggs was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD and all-cause mortality in a dose-response manner. These results should be considered in the development of dietary guidelines and updates.”
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This is a very interesting conclusion that I don’t agree with at all. When reading the study, it appears that the conclusion is rock solid, but is it? Where did they go wrong? To answer that question, we first must look at how history is repeating itself.
That history goes back to 1996. When the conclusion from a study announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) was that coffee was associated with an increased risk of esophageal cancer.
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The subsequent conclusion 20 years later (in 2016), was that it wasn’t the coffee that caused the increased risk of cancer, the beverage being over 150 degrees Fahrenheit. That heat can burn the esophagus and increase the chances of esophageal cancer. This is true for any beverage, even organic green tea! It wasn’t the coffee, but the temperature that it was consumed at.
Further studies have concluded that organic coffee can actually help to prevent many cancers! Non-organic coffee contains pesticides and other substances such as acrylamide that make that beverage less than healthy and should be avoided.
Why does this new JAMA egg study fall into the same category as that 1996 coffee study?
First of all, over 90% of the eggs that are consumed in the United States are eggs from chickens from factory eggs farms. They never see the outdoors, are cooped up shoulder to shoulder in filthy living conditions, are stressed out and only eat genetically modified grains. If you Google what I am saying, you will be appalled by what you will find.
These factory eggs are not the type of eggs that are beneficial to eat. These eggs cause more harm than good. One reason why is that a pure GMO diet triggers inflammation, which is the hallmark for many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease! Another reason is that these chickens aren’t eating what they eat in nature. They are producing eggs from the wrong diet.
The most beneficial eggs are eggs from chickens that are pasture raised. In nature, chickens forage about for their food. They eat green plants, wild seeds, insects and earthworms, not GMO corn.
If the JAMA study evaluated people who ate pastured eggs, I would bet anything that their results would have been quite different. The difference my have even shown a reduction in cardiovascular disease and premature death from eating three pasture raised eggs a week.
A moderate amount of dietary cholesterol is actually beneficial for a healthy brain and nervous system, as well as a raw material to produce numerous hormones, but that is a story for another day.
JAMA will figure this out for themselves someday, but that day is not today.