Thursday 12 February 2009
Eat Eggs!
It won't surprise any regular reader of this blog to hear that I don't have a lot of time for so-called food-health 'experts'. To my mind, they talk a lot of witless blather, and are closely associated with the mass hysteria that risk-averse governments (in the UK, particularly) engender every two or three years, in conjunction with the idiots from the health-and-safety police. Two or three months ago, it was Irish Pork that we were all supposed to be shunning...although, when closely questioned, the 'experts' quietly acknowledged that the risk associated with eating the stuff was about on the same level as the likelihood of winning the lottery.
In pretty much the same discreet way, it appears that the truth is now finally being admitted about the much-maligned egg. Ok, the advice that nobody should consume more than one egg a week was long ago acknowledged to have been the result of somebody in the WHO having got their decimal point in the wrong place. But it was only in 2007 that the idea was officially dropped that three eggs a week per person was a healthy maximum...and this was done in such a low key way, that it appears that 45% of the population still believes that eggs are somehow bad for you, and lead to clogged arteries and heart attacks. Equally quietly, the British Heart Foundation (spokesperson: Senior Dietician, Victoria Taylor) has now concluded firstly that the cholesterol in eggs has only a clinically insignificant effect on a person's blood-cholesterol, and secondly that in fact no more than a third of the cholesterol in the human body is in any way related to the cholesterol that they've ingested by way of food consumption. For the most part, it's generated internally as a direct result of various aspects of lifestyle. And to my mind, the mealy-mouthed acknowledgement of 'no more than a third' invites investigation to establish quite how much less than a third might be closer to reality.
In any event, this is good news for egg-lovers everywhere, who hitherto have felt constrained from going for their desired level of consumption (in which group I don't count myself, and the average weekly consumption of eggs in this household has always hovered around the dozen per person - if not more...) Eggs are stuffed full of proteins and vitamins (and apparently are also good sources of 'lipids', whatever they might be); they're low in calories (if you bother about that sort of thing); and there now appears to be no upper limit to how many you should eat, beyond exactly as many as you feel like!
Enjoy!
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2 comments:
Hello! First time I'm visiting your blog, and it's lovely to read about one of my favourite foodstuffs! I just wanted to make a quick comment on something you said:
For the most part, it's [cholesterol] generated internally as a direct result of various aspects of lifestyle.
Genetics play a large part too. I'm a doctor's dream in terms of diet and exercise, but still top the charts in cholesterol numbers.
Can't wait to keep reading - take care.
Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, I expect you're correct about the genetic aspect - what I find frustrating in this subject, though, is the widespread ignorance of the fact that Cholesterol and Fat in foodstuffs that we consume do NOT directly equate to Cholesterol and Fat in our systems. Fortunes have been made in the food industry on the back of exactly that misunderstanding...
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