It is highly debated whether consumption of egg and cholesterol is detrimental to cardiovascular health and longevity. There is limited and inconclusive evidence on the associations of egg or dietary cholesterol intake with all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality.
Dr Yu Zhang of Zhejiang University College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Jingjing Jiao of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China, and colleagues have found in a new study that a person's intake of whole eggs and cholesterol was positively associated with their risk of death, while intake of egg whites or egg substitutes was negatively associated with death.
The new study has been published in in PLOS Medicine.
The 2015–2020 dietary guidelines for Americans recommend eating as little dietary cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern, but also state cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.
Two prospective studies in the past published one in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and another in The BMJ — both had concluded eating one egg daily does not increase the risk for CVD.
In the new study, researchers used data on 521,120 participants from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Participants were aged 50-71 years old, 41.2% women, 91.8% non-Hispanic white, and were recruited from 6 states and 2 cities in the US between 1995 and 1996.
During a mean follow-up of 16 years, 129,328 deaths occurred in the cohort. Whole egg consumption, as reported in a food questionnaire, was significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality after adjusting for demographic characteristics and dietary factors (P<0.001), but not after further adjusting for cholesterol intake (P=0.64). Every intake of an additional 300 mg dietary cholesterol intake per day was associated with a 19% higher all-cause mortality (95% CI 1.16-1.22) and each additional half a whole egg per day was associated with a 7% higher all-cause mortality (95% CI 1.06-1.08). In contrast, egg whites/substitutes consumption was significantly associated with lower all-cause mortality (P<0.001). Replacing half a whole egg with an equivalent amount of egg whites/substitutes was associated with a reduction of 3% in cardiovascular disease mortality.
"Our findings suggest limiting cholesterol intake and replacing whole eggs with egg whites/substitutes or other alternative protein sources for facilitating cardiovascular health and long-term survival," the authors say.Clinicians and policy makers should continue to highlight limiting cholesterol intake in the US dietary recommendations, considering our results.The US dietary guidelines may recommend replacing whole eggs with egg whites/substitutes or alternative protein sources for facilitating cardiovascular health and long-term survival.
For further reference log on to:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003508