11 February 2009

Eggs are now okay - but not saturated fat!

Hi all

This morning (11 Feb), BBC News announced that we could all eat eggs again. Dr Bruce Griffin of Surrey University said that the anti-egg campaign had been based on "a misconception based on out-of-date evidence".
"The ingrained misconception linking egg consumption to high blood cholesterol and heart disease must be corrected."
"The UK public do not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat - indeed they can be encouraged to include them in a healthy diet as they are one of nature's most nutritionally dense foods."

Great, I thought, at long last they are finally catching up with what I have been preaching since I started to give a talk called "The Fat of the Land" in 1971. The tide is finally turning.

But I wonder if it is really. Further down he is reported to have said that:
"The amount of saturated fat in our diet exerts an effect on blood cholesterol that is several times greater than the relatively small amounts of dietary cholesterol.

So, Dr Griffin has yet to catch up on the couple of decades' worth of news about saturated fat! But, at least it is a start, I suppose.

Yesterday, four bank CEOs apologised to Parliament and the people for the mess they had made and the harm they had caused to world finances. I wonder how long we will have to wait for the nutritionists to make similar apologies.

Or will they wait until someone who has contracted one of the over 70 diseases discussed in Trick and Treat by following 'healthy eating' guidelines decides to sue them?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
GREAT! This is good to know...now perhaps people queuing behind me at the shop checkout won't comment: 'what you going to do with all those eggs?' (Ok, I buy at least 4 dozen boxes a week for the family sometimes more) Seriously I've been asked many times (here on the Isle of Man people 'talk' to others in the supermarket). I always lightly reply, 'well what do you think I'm going to do with them? - Eat them!'. Honestly.

Thanks for all you've written and researched Barry.

Wendy MSc

x said...

I saw that article too, and was very annoyed. The suggestion is that eggs are suddenly not bad for us. In fact they never have been, it's just that the nutritionists were wrong and now they've had to admit it. Just like they were wrong about trans fats and had to eventually admit it. One day they will have to admit they are wrong about saturated fats too (and just about everything else they say).
We eat eggs for breakfast, in quiches, ice cream and cakes, so we eat about 4 a day each.

brainpower said...

One more reason to become "proactive" and defend the real science wherever we are!! I just saw a video on YouTube where the benefits of Vitamin D and sunshine are praised BUT DO stay away from SatFats if you know what is good for you. The person advocating Vit D was James Dowd and he had the audacity to call cheese "one of the worst junk foods". Have I heard everything now? Maybe not.

Stan Bleszynski said...

Re: I wonder how long we will have to wait for the nutritionists to make similar apologies.

I personally doubt if failed nutritionists are capable of apologizing about anything. Max Planck put it brilliantly.

Regards,
Stan (Heretic)

Megan said...

I wrote a blog entry
on just this subject yesterday, and list the 'dangerously-high cholesterol foods' that kill us!

Egg yolks are highest by far, so I would love someone to explain why eggs have 'the right type of colesterol' and everything else has the wrong type. Just what is the difference?

Barry Groves said...

Hi Megan

There is no good or bad cholesterol. It's a con.

Cholesterol is one molecule and all of it is exactly the same

The thing is that we have been told for so long that there are two types (not true), that it is not easy for the 'experts' to change too quickly in case they look as ignorant as some of us think they are.

Anonymous said...

The quality of food available is a real problem. When I lived in London I could obtain unpastuerised Jersey milk and cream each week from the farmers market: now I'm in Suffolk it is quite impossible, nor can I obtain organic offal. Although Barry's observations about the limited diet allowed even to organic pigs is alarming I would never eat non-organic offal even though I believe it to be excellent food. Waitrose do organic chicken livers and the Nourishing Traditions Yahoo group is useful for tracking down local sources of good food - though often there just aren't any.

I'm not sure if it's known generally that there are two sorts of lactose A1 and A2. The former is produced by those poor abused milk machines, the Friesians / Holstiens and has an opioid effect whilst I have read that the latter is produced by more ancient breeds of cow which were the first to be domesticated - these, as I understand it, are the cows which produce lower yields of higher fat milk.

It is incredibly hard to get good quality food - and it does seem to be easier to do it in large cities than in smaller towns which may just have to depend for meat these days on a supermarket.

Catherine said...

It looks like more than a few people have blogged about this recent study - myself included :)

what really hits home for me is that there are so many "health professionals" who will continue to ignore the studies and scientific findings in order to cling to that which they've been feeding to us for so long.

I just stumbled across your blog and am enjoying it very much. Cheers!

Justine said...

This scientific report says that the lutein in eggs is more available to the body - another great reason to eat lots and lots of eggs. I am sure that my eyes have improved this past year as being on a low carb diet means I try to eat 2 eggs a day.

Consumption of One Egg Per Day Increases Serum Lutein and Zeaxanthin Concentrations in Older Adults without Altering Serum Lipid and Lipoprotein Cholesterol Concentrations -- Goodrow et al. 136 (10): 2519 -- Journal of Nutrition

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/136/10/2519

Barry Groves said...

Hi Justine

It's a good reference. I included 5 references in T&T on this but failed to list the 'egg' one.

Thanks for adding it.

By the way, I normally get through 12 eggs a week and have for years. I occasionally have to wear reading glasses (1.0 dioptre) for very small print if the light isn't too good. Otherwise there is surprisingly little deterioration in my eyesight (I'm 74). Macular degeneration is not something that worries me.

Barry

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