A crack in diet fears: Eggs OK for the heart
The once-maligned egg may not be a heartbreaker after all, new research suggests.
Finnish researchers say that even carriers of a gene called APOE4 that increases sensitivity to dietary cholesterol don’t seem to have anything to fear when it comes to the effect of eggs on heart health.
The findings followed the 21-year tracking of dietary habits among more than 1,000 middle-aged Finnish men. At the end of the tracking period, 230 of the men had experienced a heart attack. But the study authors determined that neither egg habits nor overall cholesterol consumption had any bearing on heart attack risk or the risk for hardening of arterial walls.
Study author Jyrki Virtanen of the University of Eastern Finland noted that no participant had heart disease or diabetes at the study’s launch. “(And) there is some study data from other study populations that egg or cholesterol intakes may increase the risk of heart disease among diabetics,” he said. “So our study is not a ‘license’ to eat as much cholesterol or eggs as one likes.”
The findings were reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Lona Sandon, a registered dietitian and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said that while “everything in moderation” is the way to go, “people can feel confident about adding eggs, including the yolk, into their daily diet.”
“Eggs are a powerhouse of nutrition,” she said, “with much of that nutrition found in the yolk.”