For more than one hundred years, the medical community has
led us to believe that eating fats is making us fat; that high cholesterol is a
primary cause of coronary heart disease and that any diet high in saturated
fats was taking us straight to the cemetery. We bought these hypotheses hook,
line and sinker.
Lenin said that “a lie told often enough becomes the truth”. (I
don’t think that he had dietary fats in mind when he made this statement!) After all, it seems reasonably logical that
fats would be bad for our waistline. But the body of evidence that suggests
otherwise is overwhelming.
Fifty
years of honest research show that:
- High cholesterol is not the primary cause of heart disease.
- Diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol don’t cause heart disease.
- Consumption of so-called “heart healthy” vegetable oils is linked to heart disease, cancer and many other conditions.
- Statin drugs don’t reduce the risk of death for most people, and have dangerous side effects and complications.
In
fact, the latest research suggests that eating healthy fats can help
with weight loss. Fats help slow down the food absorption, mainly the
carbohydrates: you feel fuller and more satisfied than when eating a low-fat or
no-fat diet.
Eggs, still Nature’s
most perfect food
Are you still scared of eating eggs? Are you limiting your
weekly consumption?
There is absolutely no research that links eggs to heart
disease.
A review of the scientific literature published in Current Opinion in Clinical
Nutrition and Metabolic Care indicates that egg consumption has no
measurable impact on blood cholesterol levels in 70% of the population. “Hyper-responders” are the other 30% of the population for whom eggs increase both circulating LDL and HDL cholesterol. However, heart disease risk is not driven by the amount of cholesterol in the LDL particle but instead by the number of LDL particles in the blood. We’ve all been conditioned to believe that foods that raise LDL cholesterol (AKA "bad” cholesterol) need to be avoided at all cost or at least limited.
By increasing the proportion of large LDL particles, the consumption of eggs may decrease the concentration of LDL particles, which is the most significant risk factor for heart disease.
