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 Eating egg yolks regularly increases plaque buildup about two-thirds as much as smoking does, according to a new study.
August 15th, 2012
05:38 PM ET
Is eating egg yolks as bad as smoking?A new study suggests eating egg yolks can accelerate heart disease almost as much as smoking. The study published online in the journal Atherosclerosis found eating egg yolks regularly increases plaque buildup about two-thirds as much as smoking does. Specifically, patients who ate three or more yolks a week showed significantly more plaque than those who ate two or less yolks per week. It may seem harsh to compare smoking with eating egg yolks, but lead study author Dr. David Spence says researchers needed a way to put it into perspective since both eating cholesterol and smoking increase cardiovascular risks - but the general public believes smoking is far worse for your health.
The issue is with the yolk, not the egg, says Spence, who is also a professor of neurology at the University of Western Ontario's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. "One jumbo chicken egg yolk has about 237 milligrams of cholesterol." Keeping a diet low in cholesterol is key, says Spence.  Even if you are young and healthy, eating egg yolks can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases later. "Just because you are 20 doesn't mean egg yolks aren't going to cause any trouble down the line," he says. Study: Egg yolk nearly as bad as smoking For those patients with increased coronary risk, such as diabetics, eating an egg yolk a day can increase coronary risk by two to five-fold, he adds. Atherosclerosis, also called coronary artery disease, occurs when plaque builds up in the blood vessels leading to the heart, specifically the inner arterial wall, and limits the amount of blood that can pass through. Doctors write a prescription for fresh produce In the study, researchers looked at 1,231 patients of the vascular prevention clinics at London Health Sciences Centre's University Hospital, with a mean age of 61.5. Each patient had already experienced a small stroke or had high blood pressure, hypertension or a family history of cardiovascular disease. Spence says researchers chose to use patients with a higher likelihood of cardiovascular issues because it would have been harder to get visible results using the general population with a lower risk. Patients were asked to fill out questionnaires about their diet, lifestyle and medications, including how much they smoked and the number of egg yolks they ate. An ultrasound was performed to examine their plaque buildup. Researchers took into account sex, cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, body mass index and diabetes. In addition to relying completely on the recollection of patients as to what they ate, the study did not account for waist circumference and it did not account for a patient's exercise program. And perhaps most notably, it only looked at patients with existing cardiovascular issues. The study confirms what doctors already know about eating cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, says Dr, Gordon Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the former president of the American Heart Association. "Cholesterol intake should be limited to 300 milligrams a day, particularly in people who do not have underlying heart disease," he says. However, people with high LDL blood cholesterol levels or those taking a blood cholesterol-lowering medication should eat less than 200 mg of cholesterol per day. So what can you do to keep your heart healthy? Talk to your doctor if you have a history of heart disease and consider a change in lifestyle – things like eating better, watching your cholesterol, stopping smoking, and exercising. soundoff (1,086 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next »Leave a Reply to Thinkergal
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Did the study also take into account whether the patients ate other high cholesterol foods throughout the day?
Or the frequency of the egg breakfast.
No. The study is completely bogus and flawed from what I read on the british websites. Small groups. Doesn't take in other factors, diet, drinking, etc.
tomorrow we'll read about a study telling us exact the opposite. Such types of study are just irresponsible!
Did the study take into account how you cooked the eggs, like in butter or poached or hard boiled? Did the study take into account if the eggs with farm fresh from organic chickens or where the eggs "fortified" with a bunch of crap chemicals?
Ridiculous article.
It is generally true that living leads to dying. Beyond that it's kind of catch-as-catch-can.
So, cigarettes are cool then?
Yes, whatever you do in life, good or bad, guaranteed, you will soon be dead.
exactly!!
I lightly sautee some onions and sweet peppers then add 2 eggs, beaten. I then put a little cheese on top & let it melt. Side of toast and bacon or sausage. Mmmmmm! I may die – but I'll have had breakfast heaven.
Sounds great, I'll be right over to have some.
Mmmmmm..... Bacon!!!!
Sounds great. My favorite is two fried eggs in between pancakes and syrup. I started eating this when a child, and am now in my middle 60's. I am sure I may drop over dead at any time due entirely to this breakfast, but hey, I sure have enjoyed it over the years.
I also heard that alcohol actually raises your good cholesterol...so have a tall screwdriver with your eggs in the morning and you will be fine..........
My mom has had me do that since I was six years old.
Its true, I have a doctor friend almost done with residency, she says its little known that alcohol cleans out your pipes, but damages other things, she has done numerous autopsies and stated that even though their liver, kidneys, and pancreas shown sign of damage and disease their arteries and hearts were as "clean" as a six year olds.
oh, by their I meant alcoholics
"Spence says researchers chose to use patients with a higher likelihood of cardiovascular issues because it would have been harder to get visible results using the general population with a lower risk." They say themselves the effect is unmeasurable in the general population, so its perfectly fine unless you already have heart disease and are elderly.
Nice catch. Which really begs the question – who funds this kind of "research"? And how does this count as news?
So I'm studying for the LSATS... Just gotta say way to spot the flaw in the argument...
Unmeasurable in the time of the study does not mean unmeasurable.
Always remember, if the phrase 'Studies show' or a published scientific finding are cited, then odds are incredibly high that the source of your information is flawed and shouldn't be mentioned.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Enjoy this article about it.
Except your citing a peer reviewed article yourself
Fired! Everyone!
This "medical report" is 100% pure HORSE CRAP !!! Shame on you CNN !!
Keep eating animal products, die of heart disease. Shame on YOU.
All I know is I switched to mainly egg whites a long time ago.
That's ALL you know? You don't know anything else? Holy lord you must lead a blissful life.
Eating food may kill you.
Not eating food will kill you.
Choices.
Doesn't say who funded the study. That's the first question to ask. Remember when study after study said that eggs were bad for your health??? Those studies were funded by the cereal industry. Ask the right questions.
Egg Beaters sponsored the study..
pedestrian science at its finest...
What is it with people wanting us to be afraid of everything, Terrorists, second hand smoking, egg yolk, bacteria, its like America is turning into a nation of wussies. Get over it people, you are going to die from something eventually, may as well be something you enjoy
Exactly.
I have never known anyone who has suffered from: e coli, trichinosis, salmonella, botulism, writers cramp, post nasal drip, waxy yellow buildup, carpal tunnel, junk mail, pop-up ads or lyme disease. The media thrives on fear based content, much like the republicans.
This is a retrospective study, and it's a questionaire so it's also prone to recall bias. This article should be taken with a grain of salt. the data needed to be validated. Also I have yet to examine the odds ratio, and confidence interval if i have time to look at the original article.
I wouldn't write it off but I would not hold this as gospel either. And yes, I am a real internal medicine doctor...
The cholesterol's bad enough, now you wanna add salt?
I eat 2 eggs each morning and my cholesterol readings last week were better then ever. This is just another piece of garbage talk to keep somebody in work.
What happened to the study that egg white counter acted the yoke?
My uncle is 85 years old and drinks 3 raw eggs (including yolks) every day for last 50 years. He also smokes. He is strong and healthy and looks younger than his 60 years old daughter. Same story with my grandmother. She died when she was 88. She ate 2-3 eggs every day. I guess every doctor or professor has something stupid to say now, they all want some media attention. Eat less fatty, processed foods and cakes and exercise!!!
But is a life without Hollandaise a life worth living?
Is it just me or does it seem like at this point in our evolutionary cycle we cannot eat, drink, or smoke anything that will not cause some kind of harm to our bodies? I mean we are down to water and ....yup just waiting for the day that water can cause cancer.
No, most water is full of Fluoride.
It is bad for you.
Anyone who takes the time to truly consider this study's scientific integrity can easily laugh it off as poor science. But therein lies the problem- there aren't many of us. The notion that egg yolks are unhealthy, let alone "worse for you than cigarettes," is unfounded and systematically flawed. Clearly, the study was either poorly constructed unintentionally, forcing this team of scientists to scramble for a convincing argument that would merit funding for further studies, or poorly constructed intentionally, which would reek of a biased funding source (probably one with connections to cnn). Regardless, the end result is troubling- not because it's wrong, but rather because its fallacy will go undetected by the majority of the public. Plant a seed of doubt and the public will shy away accordingly. The small minority of educated, nutritionally-conscious people who are able to think rationally and objectively about issues like these are not the concern, instead it's that vast majority who skimmed this article, and will walk away from it with a skewed perspective on cholesterol and eggs that concern me. The propagation of misinformation is a dangerous thing. My reason for posting this is to simply add to the sheer number of unconvinced readers. Enough compelling comments and maybe we can plant our own seed of doubt.
G, your comment concerns me way more than anything in this article. The study is nothing special and has many weaknesses; however, cholesterol is still unhealthy and causes heart disease. The overwhelming body of scientific evidence shows that cholesterol is incredibly unhealthy. You can ignore this all you want and think that you are right but you can't change all of the good scientific research that shows how unhealthy cholesterol is.
Cholesterol is not bad. In fact, our bodies or any animal bodies can not function without cholesterol.
In response to the user with the name "Cholesterol is Bad"......please merit your opinion with scientific support. As someone who works in the field of nutritional research, I'd be very interested to read the research you're talking about. Allow me to point you in the direction of some actual science rather than simply trying to base my argument on a phrase like "the overwhelming body of scientific evidence." I look forward to your response.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY&feature=player_embedded
So which is it? The chicken or the egg?
Seriously? Worse then smoking? Come on....
Stop eating high-glycemic foods, like wheat.
They cause diabetes and overeating by spiking, and then crashing your blood sugar.
That is where the studies and battles should be fought.
Just more pyscho-modern health freakism.
Seriously? I eat eggs for breakfast, my parents eat eggs for breakfast, my grandparents ate eggs for breakfast. Last I checked, none on this list suffered anything from eggs. Eggs were one of the main food sources of my grandparents, who lived in a rural village on a farm. There was also lots of cheese and bread and they lived to their 90s. Not to mention they loved the egg yolk(one way we make an egg is to hardboil it till the whites are cooked but the yolk stays slightly liquidy, which we then crack the egg from the top and eat the yolk before the rest of the egg. Tastes pretty good)
There are many variable factors in one's health. A combination of their environment,stress level,exercise,nourishment and probably more other things(genetics for example). It's too inaccurate to simply claim egg yolk can be bad for someone because many things can affect it.
I bet we all know someone who eats bacon and eggs every morning and drinks soda and smokes all day. They must have ateries of steel. 1
You Ignorant little fools. Eating anything factory farmed on the diet those animals are fed WILL kill you all. I am so blessed to be able to raise my own chickens on a "range" diet, and hunt all the deer My family can eat. Now I am going to go drink a breakfast of 12 egg yokes for the next month to celebrate it! Factory farmed foods will have "the yoke on you!"
signed,
NatureMan1
P.S. DON'T ever take up smoking that is sure to kill ya'
The doctor is a Jew what a surprise I'm near 30 and in better shape today then ten years ago!
I know plenty of Jewish people who eat eggs, so don't know where you're going with the argument
1960s eggs are good for you, 1970's: eggs are bad for you, 1980s: good, 1990s: bad, 2000: good, 2010, bad. I suspect there will be a marketing campaign for a new cholesterol free egg product any day now.
I eat egg yolks WHILE smoking. GTFO.
I eat 2 fried eggs EVERY day for the past 35 years.
And a bunch of saturated fat too.
This article is a Big Pharma ad – "Don't Eat Eggs – Eat Pounds Of Our Lipitor!
This is complete BS. Nothing you eat causes plaque in your arteries, your body takes what you eat and converts it to what ever it thinks you need. Smoking however causes the inner walls of your arteries to become inflamed damaging the artery and provides a spot for plaque build up.
Of course egg yolks are bad for you – the dead giveaway is that they taste good. I suspect the only healthy diet consists of eating nothing but steamed brussel sprouts on a bed of broom straw lightly seasoned with ashes.
The other day in a restaurant I watched a family come in to eat. They were all so grossly fat that they waddled in single file.
I was curious as to what they would eat. They all had the same thing extra large helpings of fish and chips. But here's the kicker they all had mega large glasses of Coke or Pepsi with refills all round. Then they waddled out Father Mother and two kids. they were huge and took two tables. ................................Don't drink pop with grease.
Ok - IGNORING CANCER, egg yokes are as dangerous as smoking.
The guy is a neurologist! What's he doing researching cardiological problems ?
What a horrible study, AND how horribly irresponsible is it for the media like CNN to give these types of study airtime but yet studies that have shown no effect from egg consumption are typically brushed to the wayside. This study and article is basically saying that correlation is the same as causation.
Glad I'm down to half-a-dozen yolks per day now. Gotta kick the habit. E-yolks, anyone???
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
Reading these stupid articles is just as bad as smoking and eating the yolks at the same time.
WAKE UP....This is a stupid scare story. Eggs have a trace amount of Chloresterol. The issue here is frying eggs in animal fat or vegtable oil whihc makes them very high in chloresterol. Egg yolks are a great source of protein contain no harmful ingredients.
Ohh no I Think Im... Passing – had an egg mcmoffing... Egg are evil... Im dead lol.
Ohh no Im at work… The Dr said that too much stress will kill me… Im dead (again)
Living is the leading cause of dying...
This article sounds so ridiculous that I had to find the journal article before responding to your message. unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on the full paper but I did read the abstract. Â Here's my opinion...
First, this was a retrospective observational study of people who were already at risk for vascular disease (therefore, probably not generalizable to people like you and I who are at low risk). Â Participants attending a vascular prevention clinic were asked to complete a survey about their history of smoking and egg yolk consumption (number of packs of cigarettes per week times the number of years, and number of egg yolks per week times the number of years). Â This type of study design relies on participants accurately reporting their consumption, it also cannot prove causation because it is retrospective and they cannot control for (and it doesn't even look like they tried to control for) other confounding factors. Â For example, many people who consume eggs consume them with butter and bacon and/or sausage which are high in saturated fat (which we know has a much bigger impact of plaque buildup than dietary cholesterol). Â Saturated fat (found only in meat, chicken, high fat dairy and processed) and trans fats (processed foods made with hydrogenated oils) are way more influential on plaque building. Â As far as I can tell, the study didn't assess intake of these foods. Â Therefore, they cannot definitively say that it was the egg yolks that caused plaque build up. Â All they can say is there was an association and that there may in fact have been some other factor that these people had in common the affected the results and that wasn't assessed for.
Having said all of that, eggs are fairly high in cholesterol. Â There is no recommended amount of dietary cholesterol for otherwise healthy people, but it is recommended that people who have high cholesterol (or take cholesterol lowering medications) limit their dietary cholesterol to 200 mg/day. Â Because one large egg yolk contains 195 mg, it's usually recommended that people with high blood cholesterol limit the yolks to four per week. Â What is absolutely recommended, for all people with or without high blood cholesterol, is to limit the amount of saturated and trans fats in the diet. Â Meaning limiting high fat meats and dairy and relying more on low fat dairy or alternatives, lean meats and poultry, fish and vegetarian sources of protein like legumes and nuts/seeds (which have no saturated fats). Â
Basically, this study isn't going to change recommendations any time soon. Â Unfortunately, what ends up in the media is often misleading and sensationalized. Â Eggs are a great source of complete protein and half of the protein and almost all of the vitamins and minerals are found in the yolk. Â I eat probably 4-6 eggs per week but get very little saturated and trans fats because we don't eat much meat, choose lean meats when we do, eat only low fat milk/yogurt and use very few processed foods that are sources of saturated and trans fats. Â Â I just had my yearly physical and my first 'adult' blood work, including cholesterol levels. Â My LDL ("bad") cholesterol was so low the lab couldn't even calculate it. Â Â
High intake of saturated/trans fats –> increases LDL cholesterol –> increase the risk of plaque build up
High intake of cholesterol has not been shown to have a significant impact on LDL cholesterol and therefore plaque build up
Read Nutrition Facts labels and choose foods with less than 2g of saturated fat and 0g trans fats per serving.
Hope that is helpful and eases some of your worries  🙂
-RD
It is my understanding that two of three researchers were tied to "statin" industries, who have a vested interest in pushing statins to folks with high cholesterol. I wonder if this study is an pharmaceutical industrial scare tactic to continue making our society on depending on them to increase their revenue. I think CNN bears to investigate this study more to see if there really are "vested interests" at work.
According to the Voralberg Health Monitoring and Promotion Programme, men of all ages and women over fifty, with very low cholesterol were likely to die of cancer, liver diseases, and mental diseases. Some people think that there is actually an inverse link between cholesterol and health.
AN EGG WITHOUT A YOKE IS NO LONGER AN EGG. IF WE CUT OUT ALL THE TASTY FOOD WHAT IS IT THAT WIE CAN
EAT. EATING IS PART OF ENJOYING LIFE. YOU CAN EAT ANYTHING YOU LIKE, JUST DON'T BE A PIG ABOUT IT.
I have also read that eating bacon is like smoking a box of Havanas.
Hah! That's funny.
That's it...Kiss in at IHOP and Denny's...Who's with ME?!!
I have also read about studies which say that the cholesterol you eat is a minor factor compared to what your own body produces and that eggs are good for you. Which studies are more valid???????
Tell you what WILL kill you, losing your peace of mind and your soul to the fackless, endless, inane drivel of the world, driven by greed and incompetence. My wife's grandmother lived a simple life, filled with faith and love for her extended family, and she gave about as much importance to all the sensationalist fluff she read in the news as I would give to the worms under the rocks in my backyard, she ate an egg from the hens raised in her back yard every day, roast pork when her son or daughter brought it to her, smoked two cigarettes half way since she was a seamstress at 17, was zaftig in her youth and lived to a reluctant 99. She gave little importance to the fey nature of her fellow man and was the most kind and gracious little old lady I have ever known. Maybe THAT'S the secret to old age.
Amen!!! My dad has had an egg every day for the last who knows how many years....with bacon *or* side pork (uncured bacon) and that man is 90. And still going strong and farming every day. Rock on, my Daddy!!
Another foolish food study!
And did they eat the yolk WITH the white in order to take the cholinesterase into account here, which effectively negates the effects of the cholesterol in the yolk.....?? I doubt it...just blame the egg yolk and move on. I'm with most other folks here....go ahead and put your fried egg right next to your bacon and add some cheese if you like. Let it rip cuz we only get one ride on this earth! Make it your own... =)