Eggs Eaten in Moderation Pass Muster, Study Finds
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An egg a day is O.K. for most people, according to researchers who found
that healthy people eating up to seven eggs a week did not increase their
risk of heart attack or stroke.
"Our study doesn't mean that people should go back to the typical Western
diet -- a breakfast with two eggs, bacon, sausage, butter and toast," said
Dr. Frank B. Hu, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Harvard School of
Public Health, who led the research. "This kind of diet is very unhealthy.
But eggs per se, I don't think they deserve such a bad reputation."
Diabetics, however, do face higher risks of heart attack or stroke with
increased egg consumption, according to the study, which is being published
today in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
A spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, which was not involved in
the study, said the findings would not change the association's belief that
Americans should limit their dietary cholesterol.
"These new data do not conflict with the American Heart Association's
recommendations that healthy individuals consume no more than 300
milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day," said the spokeswoman, Dr. Alice
H. Lichtenstein of the Department of Agriculture's nutrition center at
Tufts University.
A large egg contains about 215 milligrams of cholesterol, far more than
most other foods with the same number of calories.
But Dr. Lichtenstein agreed with the authors -- and the longtime assessment
of other experts -- that it is more important to limit consumption of
saturated fats and trans fats, the processed fats that make doughnuts,
commercial cakes and french fries so delicious.
Dr. Hu, whose study was financed by the National Institutes of Health,
noted that past research had shown dietary cholesterol to be less of a
culprit than initially believed in raising levels of cholesterol in the
blood. But he said his research was the first to focus on whether egg
consumption had an effect on the rate of heart attacks and strokes.
Dr. Hu drew his conclusions by analyzing data on 80,082 women in the
Nurses' Health Study, based at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and
37,851 men in the Health Professional Follow-Up Study, based at the Harvard
School of Public Health.
Among healthy men and women, no significant differences in risk were found
between those who consumed an average of up to one egg daily and those who
averaged less than one weekly, the researchers said.
But diabetics who averaged one egg daily were at significantly higher risk
than diabetics who ate one egg or less a week.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company