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FOOD
TO EAT. DISHES AND MENUS
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Printable Version  |
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EGGS |
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Department of Preventive Medicine,
University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, Memphis
38105, USA.
Serum cholesterol has been established
as a modifiable risk factor for coronary heart disease.
Experimental feeding studies show that saturated fat
and cholesterol increase serum cholesterol levels;
thus, dietary recommendations for lowering the risk
of heart disease proscribe the intake of both substances.
Recommendations have also included limits on the intake
of eggs because of their high cholesterol content.
In free-living populations, diet reflects a pattern
of associated choices. Increases in one food may lead
to changes in the consumption of other foods that
may modulate disease risk. Epidemiologic data are
helpful in assessing the importance of foods and nutrients
in the context in which they are actually consumed.
We review epidemiologic data relating dietary cholesterol
and eggs to coronary disease risk. Cholesterol intake
was associated with a modest increase in the risk
of coronary events. The true magnitude of the association
is difficult to estimate because most studies fail
to account for potential confounding by other features
of the diet. When a full-range of confounding factors
was considered, the association between cholesterol
intake and heart disease risk was small (6% increase
in risk for 200mg/1,000kcal/day difference in cholesterol
intake). Several studies have examined egg intake
and its relationship with coronary outcomes. All but
one failed to consider the role of other potentially
confounding dietary factors. When dietary confounders
were considered, no association was seen between egg
consumption at levels up to 1 + egg per day and the
risk of coronary heart disease in non-diabetic men
and women.
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Department of Nutrition, Potchefstroom
University, N.-W.
The recommendation that not more
than 300 mg cholesterol be consumed daily to prevent
high serum cholesterol levels and coronary heart disease
is often used to justify a restriction of egg intake
to three or four per week. One egg contains about 200
mg of cholesterol, but eggs are also excellent and relatively
inexpensive sources of essential amino acids and certain
vitamins. In this paper, the place of eggs in a prudent,
cholesterol-lowering diet as a substitute for other
animal products, is scrutinised. The extra cholesterol,
where considered as the only variable, will increase
serum cholesterol levels, but the effect is relatively
small. The exclusion of eggs from the diet should be
weighed against deprivation of essential nutrients especially
in vulnerable groups. While restriction of egg intake
in westernised populations seems justifiable, the upper
limit of three or four per week may not always be applicable,
depending on the overall diet and lipid profile of the
individual.
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Egg Nutrition Center, Washington,
DC 20036, USA. enc@enc-online.org
For over 25 years eggs have been
the icon for the fat, cholesterol and caloric excesses
in the American diet, and the message to limit eggs
to lower heart disease risk has been widely circulated.
The "dietary cholesterol equals blood cholesterol" view
is a standard of dietary recommendations, yet few consider
whether the evidence justifies such restrictions. Over
50 years of cholesterol-feeding studies show that dietary
cholesterol does have a small effect on plasma cholesterol
concentrations. The 167 cholesterol feeding studies
in over 3,500 subjects in the literature indicate that
a 100 mg change in dietary cholesterol changes plasma
total cholesterol by 2.2 mg/dL. Today we recognize that
dietary effects on plasma cholesterol must be viewed
from effects on the atherogenic LDL cholesterol as well
as anti-atherogenic HDL cholesterol since the ratio
of LDL:HDL cholesterol is a major determinant of heart
disease risk. Cholesterol feeding studies demonstrate
that dietary cholesterol increases both LDL and HDL
cholesterol with little change in the LDL:HDL ratio.
Addition of 100 mg cholesterol per day to the diet increases
total cholesterol with a 1.9 mg/dL increase in LDL cholesterol
and a 0.4 mg/dL increase in HDL cholesterol. On average,
the LDL:HDL ratio change per 100 mg/day change in dietary
cholesterol is from 2.60 to 2.61, which would be predicted
to have little effect on heart disease risk. These data
help explain the epidemiological studies showing that
dietary cholesterol is not related to coronary heart
disease incidence or mortality across or within populations.
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Beans were pearled to evaluate
the feasibility of increasing antioxidant activity and
phenolic antioxidants. Phenolics were concentrated mostly
in the hull fraction at about 56 mg of catechin equivalents
per gram of sample. The methanolic extracts of the pearled
bean samples were screened for antioxidant potential
using the beta-carotene-linoleate and the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl
(DPPH) in vitro model systems. The pearled material,
also referred to as milled samples, exhibited antioxidant
activity that correlated with phenolic content and inhibited
DPPH significantly in a dose-dependent manner. Phenolics
and antioxidant activities were also examined in chromatographic
fractions of methanolic extracts of manually obtained
hulls that represented a model used previously to ascertain
antimutagenic activity. Fractions extracted with ethyl
acetate/acetone and acetone displayed antioxidant activity,
which implies potent free radical scavenging activity
with antimutagenic activity.
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