Tuesday, August 14, 2012


Eating Egg Yolks as Bad as Smoking?

My blog has a new home. To read this entry, please go to:

22 comments:

  1. High egg consumption is dangerous—this study shows that a lot of eggs caused that group be 25% older than the low egg group! Headline: "Eggs are the source of aging"

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    1. Makes as much sense as any other conclusion.

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  2. Yeah this study got me eating even more eggs.
    If the authors themselves avoid eggs, it is proof that not eating eggs makes you stupid.

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  3. Hi Bill, can you add a follow by email function so I get notified of your new posts? Thanks

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    1. Just added it! Thanks for the suggestion!

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    2. Bill, please write to me at hg.mikk@gmail.com re suggestions for your blog. (I am Nell who suggested the email sign up).

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  4. Thanks for sharing the rest of the story. Eggs rock!

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  5. I'm waiting for the study that says, "Every person in the history of the planet who has eaten egg yolks has died, or will one day. Coincidence?"

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  6. Hi Bill. You say towards the end of your post that "these epidemiological studies do not show cause and effect. They merely show correlation." How would you go about establishing causation?

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    1. Showing causation in humans would be extremely challenging because you would have to feed one group a certain diet plus X number of eggs per week, and another group the same diet but with no eggs. Then, you would measure the plaque mass after X years. Although, you still can't control for environmental factors or genetics differences among individuals.

      In an animal study, say using mice, you could control for genetics and environment, then just modify the diets. It would be pretty straight forward in a mouse model but you couldn't be 100% sure that the same result would occur in humans.

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    2. The Hills' Criteria of causation.

      http://www.drabruzzi.com/hills_criteria_of_causation.htm

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  7. Glad someone took the time to go back to the original publication [I didn't want to spend the $32 for it]. You poked some great holes in their conclusions, and this often seems to be the case with the egghead nutrition crowd (pun obv intended).

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  8. Your analysis is flawed. Table 2 separates participants into quintiles of egg-yolk years; you cannot simply take the average eggs per week of each group and treat it as an independent variable.

    You also have no business making the claim that "the group that ate the most eggs had the lowest total cholesterol, lowest LDL cholesterol, [and] highest HDL cholesterol". Those differences do not appear to be statistically significant.

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    1. Tim, in my analysis I compared the expected plaque mass based on the mean age of the highest egg consuming group (69.77 years) to the actual plaque mass of that group. I did not use any analysis based on average eggs per week.

      Also, it's absolutely true that the group that ate the most eggs had the lower total cholesterol, lowest LDL, and highest HDL. If the researchers' theory was correct, high egg consumption would lead to higher serum cholesterol. Their data does not show that. They have no mechanism to justify their argument.

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    2. The problem isn't that the sample means are higher or lower in terms of LHL, HDL, or cholesterol, it's that the p-values don't indicate those differences to be significant. You can't reliably say that there's any difference between the groups, one way or the other.

      You're drawing conclusions based on heavily processed data that doesn't support the type of analysis you're trying to do.

      You make statements like "those individuals who ate the fewest eggs had a stroke an average of 14 years earlier than those who ate the most eggs" but ignore that the grouping itself is correlated with age; you may as well say that people who have lived long enough to eat lots of eggs tend to be old.

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  9. I figured there were holes in the 'research.' I think the doctors who did the research were looking for an attention grabbing headline. Thanks for this.

    http://goo.gl/nlokj

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  10. "The group that ate the most eggs had an average age of 69.77 years compared to only 55.70".

    The more eggs you eat the longer you live. Done and done. Welcome to modern science epidemiologic studies...

    As for your comment "According to their data, it seems that eating lots of eggs actually promotes a healthier cholesterol profile and lower body mass index." This isn't the first time data has showed this and it won't be the last.

    Great summary. These types of studies are so common nowadays that I hate to even read them. Garbage in garbage out.

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  11. Good update thanks for sharing it here about smoking.
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  12. Moderation is the key, if too much egg yolk is consumed then it can cause adverse effects.
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  13. this study got me eating even more eggs.If the authors themselves avoid eggs, it is proof that not eating eggs makes you stupid.
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