Anonymous wrote:There are MAJOR problems with this study, beyond what's clear from the abstract.

The most important is that the average age of the low-consumption group is 55 and the high-consumption group is 69. These are on the low and high end of their Framingham risk point groups, respectively, so the increased risk from age alone is min 37.5%, but closer to the max of 50%. In other words, major increases in arterial plaque are already known to be age-related, and they didn't adjust for that.

They also don't mention that the high-consumption group's lipid panels are indistinguishable from the low-consumption group's. Since the high-consumption folks are older, they should be worse, and they're not. This study doesn't come close to saying what the authors claim - if anything, it supports the opposite conclusion.

Add this to the documented anti-atherogenic effects of eggs, much larger studies showing no impact or positive impacts of eggs, and of course the Framingham findings that higher dietary cholesterol was associated with lower, not higher, CVD risk.

Another important misrepresentation here is that plaque isn't random, it's a repair for vascular damage. In the healthy body, plaques form and re-dissolve easily. In atherosclerosis, they persist because the damage is persisting, and that happens not because cholesterol is high, but because there are other problems, usually with insulin. So this is like blaming the bandaid instead of the butcher knife.

The worst blood lipid profiles - high triglycerides, bad ratios, COMBINED with very high cholesterol - are usually a result of high consumption and/or poor metabolism of sugars. High total cholesterol can be an indicator of other problems, but is not by itself a problem. And dietary cholesterol has little effect on blood cholesterol, anyway.

So even industrial eggs have positive effects, but I avoid them anyway, because real free-range/foraging eggs are much healthier. Birds fed primarily grain lay eggs higher in cholesterol and lower in fat-soluble nutrients than birds who eat less grain, more greens and cholesterol-rich insects.