Chapter 22 Chapter 20 Defusing the Cholesterol Bomb

Who doesn't like eggs?Americans affectionately call their favorite poached eggs for breakfast sunny side up; the Prussians have precision in their eggs too, with five-minute poaching; the Spaniards are partial to their thick omelets, while the Japanese I like to dip raw meat in raw eggs.In the animal world, eggs are also a rare delicacy, especially for foxes, ferrets and monkeys, our close relatives.It is well known that eggs are naturally concentrated in a large amount of nutrients.The laid eggs provide all the necessary nutrients for the little life inside.These substances are so rich that the life that will break out of the shell in the future can be complete.If the principle of eating only half, or not close to fat, is adopted, the unborn offspring in the eggshell will have no hope of survival.Eggs are a comprehensive nutritional product that chicks can see from the hen. They contain high-quality protein, rich in calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, as well as aluminum, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, iodine and fluorine , In addition, there are all kinds of vitamin B, vitamin A, carotene, vitamin E and K, and all the polyunsaturated and highly unsaturated fatty acids needed for survival are also included.There is also a little bit of cholesterol, a substance that is very important to small life.

Maybe the last one is too much?Because of cholesterol alone, eggs are on many people's fasting list, and they are only allowed to show their faces at Easter.An egg contains about 220 mg of cholesterol.Meat, sausage and cheese also contain cholesterol.Nutrition authorities say that if the daily intake of cholesterol exceeds 300 mg, the risk of myocardial infarction will increase. They recommend eating only two eggs a week, and no more than three eggs at most.But occasionally, an egg is needed to bake a cake, and an egg is needed to make a bean cake, so the quota is quickly used up, and it is impossible to really eat another egg.

This is simply the tragedy of eggs.In recent years, consumers have become more and more alienated from eggs, which has led businesses to keep lowering the prices of eggs on the market so that customers do not run out of eggs.Germans pay the same price for an egg today as they did forty years ago.Just imagine if the price of Mercedes-Benz cars is the same as it was 40 years ago, you will definitely suspect that the poor quality of the products makes this brand worthless.It is really wronged that the fate of the eggs is so bad. Other sources of cholesterol, like eggs, are generally kept at a respectful distance, especially the internal organs of animals, such as brains, livers, kidneys and lungs.Before the mad cow disease crisis, many people still ate these offal with relish.Compared to eggs, this is the real cholesterol bomb.Tissues and organs with active metabolic functions always have a lot of cholesterol, because cholesterol is an indispensable substance for cell metabolism.As long as you get some sun, your body can use cholesterol to make vitamin D, male and female hormones, adrenal hormones, and bile acids for digestion.Cholesterol is essential to any cell membrane, and human skin is therefore impermeable.Because it is so important to life, the smart nature has made human beings independent of cholesterol in food.We don't need to eat real cholesterol because we can make the cholesterol our bodies need every day by eating only plant-based, cholesterol-free foods.

Wouldn't it be a pity to remove such a nutritious, cheap and good food from the diet simply because of its high cholesterol content?Years ago, a few scientists thought about it this way.So they recruited subjects who voluntarily ate a lot of eggs for several weeks.In some experimental sessions, the subjects ate extra eggs a day in addition to their normal diet, up to six a day.However, the side effects that have brought eggs into disrepute have never emerged.The subjects' cholesterol did not rise as many expected.Even when eating six eggs a day, some subjects' blood indexes did not change significantly, and some people's cholesterol even dropped.The most dramatic thing is that a university hospital in the United States discovered during a routine inspection that a farmer in a chicken farm had been eating eggs with his belly open every day for many years, with a record of eating 26 eggs in one day, but his Cholesterol is perfectly normal.

This stunned the experts, but the general public was ignorant of it.With the development of science, the research methods have become more and more precise, and gradually people have to admit that there are huge differences in the body reactions of each person to the intake of eggs.If it is roughly divided, dietary intake of cholesterol will increase the concentration of cholesterol in the blood of some people, while others will not increase, and some people will respond with a decrease in cholesterol.Since the diet and environmental conditions in the experiment were exactly the same, this can only be explained by the effect of genetics.

Now, the secret to dietary cholesterol has finally been revealed through costly experiments.People label the cholesterol in eggs with isotopes, so that they can track their trajectory in the human body.It was found that, first of all, only half of the dietary cholesterol is absorbed by the intestines on average; second, when the intake of cholesterol increases, the regulatory mechanism will work immediately, and the oxidized sterols produced during the metabolism of dietary cholesterol will immediately inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol in the body ; Third, if the intake of cholesterol through food exceeds the ratio of self-synthesis, the digestion mechanism will work, and more cholesterol will be excreted with the help of bile acids.

It can be deduced that, under normal genetic conditions, dietary cholesterol can be effectively regulated.Cholesterol intake within the normal range will not significantly increase the cholesterol content in the body.In other words, from a biological point of view, the amount of cholesterol absorbed in the intestine has little to do with the concentration of cholesterol in the blood.Of course, this is not only the cholesterol in eggs, but also other delicacies, such as offal, bone marrow, shrimp, and lobster.According to the current understanding, if you eat two to three eggs a day, the amount of cholesterol in them is not a problem for most people at all.Only 15% to 20% of people will have problems.

Based on the data obtained from the comprehensive analysis of all metabolic studies, a more accurate prediction can be made: if a person does not follow the prescribed average intake of 300 mg of cholesterol per day, but dares to eat 400 mg, in other diets with the same structure Under normal circumstances, the blood cholesterol concentration is likely to increase by 2 mg per 100 ml, for example, from 240 mg per 100 ml to 242 mg.If you follow the health guideline, the intake of cholesterol does not reach 300 mg, but only 200 mg, the concentration of cholesterol may drop by two units, that is, from 240 mg per 100 ml to 238 mg.If you eat more vegetables and fruits while eating more eggs, the increase in cholesterol may not be visible, or even decrease instead.

It appears that we humans are particularly well adapted to a diet rich in cholesterol.Where did this come from?We can't imagine that this came from a mostly plant-based and therefore cholesterol-free diet in human evolution, as described by some nutrition authorities, who also call it a species-specific dietary pattern. I dare not comment on whether the weak cholesterol-raising effect of eggs is worth mentioning.But what is certain is that the rise in cholesterol caused by stress is far more serious than this.If instead of eating an egg for breakfast every day, you vomited with your partner, and then got gimmicked by your boss at work, you can imagine the result.I no longer want to imagine that if you want to enjoy an egg on Sunday morning, you have to endure endless admonitions. Of course, this is entirely out of concern for your health. How much your cholesterol will rise.

Perhaps, the results of scientific research can really enlighten some stupid minds at the dawn of the new millennium: there is no direct relationship between the body's cholesterol intake and the cholesterol concentration in the blood.In fact, only 2% of our cholesterol content is determined by dietary factors, among which dietary fat, crude fiber and certain plant sterols play the largest role.98% of the cholesterol content is determined by other factors, most of which are the body's own mechanisms. If cholesterol in food doesn't concern me, why would I give up shrimp, lobster, steak and eggs?Is there any reason for those warnings that cholesterol is the enemy?Has it ever been observed that people who do not restrict themselves to cholesterol also suffer more myocardial and cerebral infarctions, regardless of their cholesterol levels?

Experts from the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University have done the most detailed research on this issue.On April 21, 1999, they published the results of the largest ever study of the relationship between egg intake and the risk of myocardial infarction.In this long-term observation, they surveyed 38,000 men and 80,000 women.When calculating the risk, they considered all known and possible influencing factors.As a result, no matter whether they ate no more than one egg a day, or boldly ate more than one egg, their incidence of myocardial infarction did not increase at all!In women, the opposite trend was even found. The more eggs they ate, the lower the incidence.In terms of cerebrovascular infarction, no significant association was found.It is not the chicken farmer's journal that published the results of this study, but the professional journal "Journal of the American Medical Association" (JAMA). Has anyone announced this comforting news to the German people?Can someone restore the reputation of eggs so that everyone can dispel their scruples and enjoy them boldly?No.why?Taking the opportunity of this research publication, I wrote to the chairman of the German Nutrition Society again to ask, based on these new understandings, whether the society will change the suggestion of restricting the consumption of eggs?This time he finally gave me an answer. Although the content was disappointing, it was already a big improvement compared to before.The official opinion of the society was soon also published in the new "Information of the German Society of Nutrition".A former president of the society laid out his position, criticizing the Harvard study for its flaws in the way it collected the data.Therefore, he doubts whether this study is qualified to challenge the recommendations of the German Nutrition Society. So what epidemiological studies are based on the German Nutrition Society's recommendations on restricting eggs?In previous studies, how did they collect and organize the data?Like the Harvard study, they also used questionnaires and interviews, and had to deal with the same complex and unpredictable situations and wrong information.They encountered the same problem, but compared with the new study of Harvard University, the previous questionnaires did not distinguish the differences in such detail, and in the analysis, they did not consider so many interference factors from the environment and lifestyle .In the end, they were less accurate and less convincing than this study.So what did they come up with?Did they use their own methods to reveal the dangerous nature of eggs?No!Of the fifteen studies conducted in the past, only three showed that increased cholesterol intake would increase the risk of myocardial infarction, and they considered relatively few confounding factors in their statistics.Oddly, it is these three studies that the German Society of Nutrition apparently bases its opinion on.The remaining twelve studies conducted in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the vast majority, found no causal relationship between cholesterol intake and myocardial infarction. The so-called inference that dietary cholesterol will increase the risk of myocardial infarction has a ratio of thirteen to three.Such content can not be seen in the publication "Information" of the German Nutrition Society.So those outdated and unreasonable nutritional advice will accompany consumers into the new millennium.If there were no eggs in the world, I am afraid that our nutritional authority would have to invent such a thing out of thin air.