Hardee’s Low Carb Breakfast Bowl: Folded egg, sausage, bacon, ham, cheddar cheese, American cheese, Swiss cheese. Total cholesterol: 630 mg. (Total fat: 58 grams, saturated fat: 23 mg.)

How is it that some studies show eggs increase cholesterol, and some studies don’t? Because, beyond a certain amount, cholesterol in the diet doesn’t have an appreciable effect.

The authors of the study in this post, Eating Cholesterol (Egg Yolk) Found To Raise Blood Cholesterol, said:

“A further increase in the intake of cholesterol probably would not have caused a marked increase in the serum cholesterol, because Beveridge et al. (10) and Connor et al. (11) have shown that once a certain intake level of dietary cholesterol is reached, which is not much beyond the highest level used in our study, further increments will have little additional effect.”

You have to look at the background diet. Is it already awash in cholesterol? The effect from adding eggs will be muted. This mechanism is seized upon by those who claim eggs and other sources of dietary cholesterol are harmless.

Here are some foods’ cholesterol amounts:

• Hardee’s low-carb breakfast bowl: 630 mg
• McDonald’s scrambled eggs (2): 425 mg
• 1 extra large egg: 237 mg
• 4 ounces cooked shrimp: 221 mg
• 2 ounces chicken liver pate: 218 mg
• 4 ounces chicken thighs with skin (about 2): 112 mg
• 4 ounces ground beef patty: 100 mg
• 1/2 cup vanilla ice cream: 98 mg
• 4 ounces white meat chicken breast, no skin: 96 mg
• 4 ounces lobster: 81 mg
• Starbucks blueberry muffin: 70 mg
• 2 ounces cheddar cheese: 58 mg
• 1 cup plain yogurt: 32 mg

Ingestion Of Egg Raises Plasma Low Density Lipoproteins In Free-Living Subjects, Lancet, March 1984

In addition to their usual diet, 17 lactovegetarian college students consumed 400 kcal of test foods per day containing one extra-large egg for three weeks and similar isocaloric eggless foods for an additional three weeks in a randomised double-blind crossover trial. Ingestion of the egg increased dietary cholesterol from 97 to 418 mg per day. Mean plasma low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol was 12% higher (p = 0.005) and mean plasma apolipoprotein B was 9% higher (p = 0.007) when eggs were being consumed than during the eggless period. Mean plasma high density lipoprotein cholesterol, apolipoproteins A-I and A-II, very low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and total triglycerides did not change significantly. Thus, ingestion of egg seems selectively to raise cholesterol and protein in LDL particles in the plasma of free-living normal people. Plasma LDL may be more sensitive to cholesterol at low intakes than at moderate to high intakes.

12% means… If you eat an egg a day, in 3 weeks your LDL would rise:

• From 100 mg/dl to 112 mg/dl
• From 150 mg/dl to 168 mg/dl

I saw this on McDougall’s Forum this morning:

Hi Lex

The So Cal WF’s Region faithfully carried the item for over 10 years. Unfortunately when other Regions brought it in, it was DC’ d soon after for lack of sales. Furthermore we were forced to credit distributors for product that went past code dates.

Some pieces of the equipment to manufacture the chips have been moved to other production lines, and other parts dismantled and sold. The space has already been rededicated to other products.

We will not be getting back into the baked tortilla chip business.

David K
Director of Business Development
Anitas
Anita’s Mexican Foods / La Reina

We liked this chip. Great corn flavor, crispy but not fried or made with oil (not rancid!), made from whole grain, stone-ground non-GMO corn, low-sodium, organic even. Such a disappointment. I guess people’s tastes have changed. I have always liked non-greasy chips, even back when my diet was fairly fatty. There was a product called Guiltless Gourmet years ago that we used to buy but I think they have since added back the fat. Does anyone know if there is another baked tortilla chip on the market?

The World Health Organization says that good heath in a population requires “different sectors working together.” They gave the example of air pollution in this infographic:

You can’t just wake up one morning and decide you want to breathe clean air. There has to be clean air to breathe. The same is true for food, water, and just about any human requirement. It has to be a community effort.

I want to pull out just one piece of this because I’m curious. How many people have their kitchen vented to the outside? Most of the places I’ve lived in my life did not have vented kitchens, even though they had hoods over the range or hob. Do new construction homes typically build in a vent to the outside?

[yop_poll id=”6″]

I just posted about a study that found people with high cholesterol and high blood pressure have a substantially higher risk of dying from heart disease. How do you get high cholesterol? This study* found that eating cholesterol (in the form of egg yolks) substantially increases serum cholesterol:

Effect Of Dietary Cholesterol On Serum Cholesterol In Man, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, June 1972

The purpose of the work reported here was to examine the effect that … cholesterol has when the composition of the diet is otherwise the same as that customarily consumed in the United States.

Subjects: 56 male inmates at Holmesburg prison in Pennsylvania. This was a very controlled study.

There were 4 diet groups. All contained the same amount of calories, fat (40%, same polyunsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio of 0.3), protein, and carbohydrate. They differed by the amount of cholesterol, provided by dried egg yolk. (One large egg contains about 212 mg cholesterol.):

Group 1: 0 mg cholesterol
Group 2: 106 mg/1000 calories
Group 3: 212 mg/1000 calories
Group 4: 317 mg/1000 calories

The intervention part of the study lasted 42 days. Those who ate the most cholesterol experienced the greatest increase in serum cholesterol, a 25% increase over their baseline cholesterol-free diet:

(Day 34 they attribute to analytical error.)

Findings:

The ingestion of cholesterol resulted in an elevation of the serum cholesterol. This increase was linear over the entire range of sterol feeding. Each 100 mg cholesterol in 1,000 kcal of diet resulted in approximately a 12 mg/100-ml increase in serum cholesterol. The highest level of cholesterol that was fed approximates that in the United States diet. The subjects receiving this diet showed a 40 mg/100-ml rise in serum cholesterol.

It is proposed that relatively greater importance should be given to dietary cholesterol as a determinate of the serum cholesterol level in the United States population.

* I saw this on McDougall’s forum. It was posted by Jeff Novick, McDougall’s resident dietitian.

Thanks, Virginia!

Combined Effect of Blood Pressure and Total Cholesterol Levels on Long-Term Risks of Subtypes of Cardiovascular Death, Hypertension, January 2015

This was a meta-analysis of ~74,000 Japanese adults. Long follow-up: 15 years.

After stratifying the participants by 4 systolic BP ×4 total cholesterol categories, the group with systolic BP ≥160 mm Hg with total cholesterol ≥5.7 mmol/L had the greatest risk for coronary heart disease death (adjusted hazard ratio, 4.39; P<0.0001 versus group with systolic BP <120 mm Hg and total cholesterol <4.7 mmol/L).

The adjusted hazard ratios of systolic BP (per 20 mm Hg) increased with increases in total cholesterol categories (hazard ratio, 1.52; P<0.0001 in group with total cholesterol ≥5.7 mmol/L). Similarly, the adjusted hazard ratios of total cholesterol increased with increases in systolic BP categories (P for interaction ≤0.04).

High BP and high total cholesterol can synergistically increase the risk for coronary heart disease death.

Those with systolic BP >160 mm Hg and total cholesterol >220 mg/dl had a 4.4 times greater risk of death than those with BP <120 mm Hg and total cholesterol <182 mg/dl.* As risks go, that 4.4 is quite high.

Having high cholesterol plus high blood pressure was worse than having either of them by themselves. Just slightly elevated BP plus slightly elevated cholesterol was risky too.

* Here’s an online conversion tool.

Wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 after a 70-year absence. Watch how they changed the ecosystem of the park: