Let’s talk about eggs, baby.
Let’s talk about 2 or 3, let’s talk about all the good eggs and the bad eggs, and the
ones in between.
Let’s talk about eggs!
Hey everybody, this is Matt Lieberman filling in for DNews.
I love eggs.
They’re kind of the perfect food.
They’re easy to prepare, they’re delicious, and they’re packed with protein.
However, a debate has raged for years about whether or not the yolks, which contain 186
milligrams of dietary cholesterol, are harmful to your body.
And those fears are justifiable.
LDL, or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, puts your body at risk for heart disease and
lowers fertility rates at high levels.
However, HDL, or High Density Lipoprotein cholesterol, is vital to a healthy body.
Did you know that cholesterol is an important structural element in the membrane of every
last one of your cells, and also helps create steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen?
In fact, cholesterol is so vital to human existence that your liver produces it on a
regular basis.
Actually, when you consume dietary cholesterol, you aren’t adding cholesterol to your body
by a large margin.
Your liver detects the change in cholesterol intake and lowers production accordingly to
keep your body on an even keel.
Now, the long-prevailing opinion of doctors is that adults should consume under 300 milligrams
of cholesterol a day, and 2-6 egg yolks a week.
However, there is abundant scientific evidence that these limits are largely unwarranted,
and that it is dietary fat, not cholesterol, that raises LDL levels.
In several studies, large groups of people are split in half.
One half eats 1-3 whole eggs each day, and the other eats an egg substitute such as egg
beaters.
Over a period of months, egg eaters saw their good HDL cholesterol levels climb, while bad
LDL levels remained stagnant in 70% of participants.
The remaining 30% saw slight increases, but nothing drastic.
Also, those that ate pasture-raised eggs enriched with omega 3 fatty acids saw drops in triglycerides,
a major risk factor for heart disease, and all egg-eaters saw significant increases in
antioxidants such as Lutein in their blood.
Now it is important to point out that these studies were all conducted on participants
eating no more than three eggs a day, so I can’t say with any certainty what would
happen to you if you ate more than three daily.
However, egg yolks are packed with vitamins and nutrients.
Vitamin A, B2, B5, B12, selenium, calcium, iron, potassium, zinc, manganese, folate,
the list goes on!
They also contain choline, an important nutrient that the body requires to produce the neurotransmitter
acetylcholine.
According to a 2004 US dietary survey, 90% of Americans do not consume their recommended
amount of choline.
Eggs also deliver a fat shot of protein that has an amazing amino acid profile, including
9 essential aminos that cannot be produced by the human body and MUST be gotten from
diet.
So, people, in closing, your friend who read that thing, and then that other thing, and
that other thing about how eggs were good and bad and good and bad again, tell them
to go suck an egg, or two or three.
They’ll feel a lot better.
So do you feel more confident consuming whole eggs, or are you still concerned about cholesterol?
Let us know in the comments below.
I’m Matt Lieberman filling in for DNews.
You can find more of my videos over at Sourcefed.
Please like the video and subscribe to the channel.
Thanks for watching.