Image 1: You better make sure you don't miss out on these delicious heart- and brain-healthy cholesterol bombs.

whole

whole

Figure 1: Composition of the control and the three experimental diets (adapted from Yang. 2012)

Figure 2: Body weight gain, food intake, food efficiency (food intake / weight gain) and relative visceral fat weight (per body weight) in Sprague Dawley rats after 60 and 90 days on experimental diets; data expressed relative to control group on standard rodent chow (data calculated based on Yang. 2012)

Figure 3: Triglyceride, total, low density (LDL) and high desnity (HDL) cholesterol in Sprague Dawley rats after 60 and 90 days on experimental diets; data expressed relative to control group on standard rodent chow (data calculated based on Yang. 2012)

statistically

only

Figure 4: mRNA expression of hydroxymethylglutaryl CoA reductase (HMG-CoA R), LDL receptor (LDL-r), cholesterol 7a -hydroxylase (CYP71A), acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT) lecithin cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT) expressed relative to control (data adapted from Yang. 2012)

375x higher dietary cholesterol intake

"[i]n the majority of healthy adults" the addition of one egg per day to a "normal fat diet" lead to increases in HDL-c and decreases of the total cholesterol to HDL ratio ( In case you doubt that this rodent data has any significance for human beings, I just want to remind you that a 2008 study by Mayurasakorn et al., which found that Mayurasakorn. 2008 ). Their conclusion that "egg consumption might benefit blood cholesterol" was however similarly ignored as the absence of scientific data to support the "eggs = increased risk of heart disease"-myth.

[...] the mechanisms by which an egg diet lowers plasma cholesterol need to be further characterized and the special functional factors in egg need to be identified

Most of you will probably be familiar with the good old saying "", right? And if you are an otherwise healthy individual the micronutrients from the apple will probably really help you maintain this status. But what if the doctor was already there to put you on the healthy low fat diet, the negative health consequences of which I have addressed in yesterday's blogpost ? In that case,eggs probably provide a more promising escape route from that low-fat, high-carb trap - at least this is what the the results of a soon to be published study from thein Wuhan, China would suggest ( Yang. 2012 ).In their 60 to 90 day experiment, the Chinese researchers put a group of 8-week old Sprague-Dawley rats (n=18 for each group) on dietary regimen which differed in either cholesterol content (control vs. experimental groups) or the source of dietary cholesterol, i.e.orIf you take a closer look at the exact composition of the diets inthe you will probably notice that macronutrient-wise the three"high cholesterol" diets are miles-apart from what the average "low carber" would consider a healthy high fat diet. Still, the idea of choosing whole eggs as a major constituent (>55%) of one's diet should ring a bell for everyone who is familiar with the practical realization of the so-called "induction phase" of the purportedly (from the perspective of the same people who recommend the purportedly "heart-healthy low-fat diet") artery-clogging Atkins diet.Interestingly, the data inshows that even this version of, with a 40% carbohydrate content in thegroup (cf.) lead to significant reductions in weight gain and food efficiency (weight gain per gram of chow) and, more importantly, produced statisticallyat the end of the 90day study period (at 60 days there were no statistical significant inter-group differences).In view of the fact that it has never been the notion that eggs would make you fat, but rather their purported negative effect on cholesterol levels due to which eggs, in general, and yolks, in particular, have gotten a bad rep over the last years, I guess that the visceral fat argument, alone, won't suffice to convince the egg-white consumer that they are missing out on the best part of the egg. After all, it was and unfortunately still is their purported negative effect on cholesterol that is literally at the heart of the egg(yolk)-scare.If you do yet take a look at the actual effects the natural cholesterol from the egg-containing diets had on the blood lipids of the rodents (cf), you will notice that those werenon-existent. In other words,the lard + synthetic cholesterol diet had a statistically significant negative impact on the plasma lipids of the rats.Thein the egg-groups, on the other hand, did not only, as evidenced by the reduction inexpression (HMG-CoA R, cf.) andvia(CYP71A), it also(lack of LDL-r expression in the brain is associated with increased plaque formation in Alzheimer's, cf. Katsouri. 2011 ),by reducing(ACAT) andvia increased(LCAT) expression.It is thusly not surprising that the Chinese scientists conclude that contrary to the "conventional approach to weight reduction", of which the scientists state that it is[I am not making that up, it is the exact wording from the study ;-]", an "egg diet", which "theoretically [...] would be more likely to cause obesity", could not only help those individuals finally shed unhealthy visceral fat, it could also lead to significant improvements in their lipid metabolism. If it were not for the statement thatone could be led to believe that Yang et al. had finally grasped the notion that just eating the right (whole) foods could solve the problem...that will soon be patented and sold as an adjunct to the standard statin therapy,