Eggs, Cigarettes, and Atherosclerosis

A study in the journal Atherosclerosis found that eating just 3 eggs or more a week was associated with a significant increase in artery-clogging plaque buildup in people’s carotid arteries going to their brain, a strong predictor of stroke, heart attack, and death. If you check out my 3-min video Eggs vs. Cigarettes in Atherosclerosis you’ll see they found an exponential increase in arterial plaque buildup for smokers and egg-eaters. Those that ate the most eggs had as much as two-thirds the risk of those that smoked the most, the equivalent of a pack-a-day habit for 40 years or more.

This did not go over easy with the egg industry.

As revealed in a series of internal memos about this group of researchers retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act, the American Egg Board discussed the “wisdom of making industry responses when the public knows there is a vested interest…” So the Executive Director of the Egg Board’s “Egg Nutrition Center” proposed they contact “some of our ‘friends’ in the science community” to have an “objective, external source author the response.”

“If you do so,” the Egg Board wrote to one of their “friends” at Yale, “we’ll certainly compensate you…” But the prominent Yale physician refused to “participate in an overtly antagonistic letter” given his friendship with one of the co-authors of the eggs and atherosclerosis review.

If you can’t find someone with credentials to counter the science, why not just make one up? Check out Eggs vs. Cigarettes in Atherosclerosis to see this story’s bizarre twist involving an attempt to discredit the egg & smoking study with a hacked email account.

This is the same prestigious research team that wrote the landmark review upon which I based my videos Egg Cholesterol in the Diet and Avoiding Cholesterol Is a No Brainer.

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