2023.02 Plant Based Treasure Valley February is Heart Health Month!
See the PBTV Presentation from 12/04/2018 (posted on the PBTV website).
The Exam Room Podcast: on You tube, 02.15.2023, with Dr Neal Barnard and Chuck Carroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB8akgk-aFQ&t=1546s&ab_channel=Physici ansCommittee
“Eggs Exposed: Healthy Food or Serious Health Hazard?”
Dr Barnard says that when an egg is laid, it has “everything in it to make a complete chicken”, It has a massive amount of cholesterol. It doesn’t have the vitamins that we humans need.
According to Dr Barnard, the Egg Nutrition Center works very hard to make eggs look good, and their information states that the cholesterol in eggs will not raise a person’s cholesterol. The ENC funds many, many studies where their conclusions do not support their studies. They say that the increase in cholesterol may go up but they say that the increase in cholesterol is not as bad as other things (butter, meat).
The Framingham study, (1950’s: a population-based, observational cohort study) along with many other independent studies (not funded by the Egg Industry) found that eggs raise cholesterol immensely. The egg Industry funded their own studies (starting in the 1970’s), where they used relatively small numbers of participants and then stated that the results were not statistically meaningful.
Is there a disclaimer that the Egg Industry needs to put on studies to show who funded the studies? Yes. Studies are required to list who funds them.
According to Dr Barnard, eggs are cholesterol dense. About half of the cholesterol of the egg that a person eats ends up in their bloodstream.
Plants supply the essential amino acids in the correct amounts that humans need. Eggs (and other animal products) are too high in amino acids and this is detrimental.
“We have known since the Framingham Study, that if you take the eggs out of the diet, and replace them with plants, cholesterol levels drop immensely.”
High cholesterol levels in people are heart attacks waiting to happen. About half of the cholesterol in an egg ends up in your bloodstream. The saturated fat from animal products causes your body to make cholesterol.
Harvard researchers started looking at individuals who got their protein from animal sources as opposed to people who got their protein from plants, and found that the people eating animal products died earlier than those people who ate whole plant based foods. Eating plants gives us the amount of amino acids that we need.
In 2005, the Egg Nutrition center started putting out their own studies saying that eggs are not dangerous.
In 2015, the American Heart Association (AHA) stated that eggs are healthy. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was heavily lobbied by the Egg Board (the Egg Nutrition Center).
The AHA has the Industry Nutrition Forum, where companies lobby and contribute money to have their foods listed as safe, “they buy influence” for about $15,000 each year as “dues”, according to Dr. Barnard.
Companies such as McDonalds, Cargill (the largest privately held global food company), the Egg Nutrition Center, Quaker Foods, General Mills, Mars/Wrigley, and others pay these “dues”.
The AHA has been “hammered” about this a lot. The PCRM does not accept money from any of these groups. PCRM does accept money from individuals and from grants (ie., the Diabetes Action and Research Foundation). In addition, The National Institute of Health contributes to PCRM research.
Healthy Replacements for Eggs, as recommended by Dr Barnard:
● Tofu, scrambled with nutritional yeast and spices
● “Just Egg” is a commercial product, made from mung beans (has a little amount of oil)
● Bake with flax, chia seeds, bananas
Additional Information: Dr John MacDougall (March 28, 2022) https://www.drmcdougall.com/education/information/eggs-are-for-growing-chicks/
Eggs are the richest unprocessed food commonly consumed. Rational thinking people might partake of this delicacy on a special occasion, such as after the annual Easter egg hunt. Reasonable behavior is undermined by the efforts of the American Egg Board whose mission to support America’s egg farmers and increase demand for eggs and egg products and their efforts have resulted in the monthly per capita shell egg consumption of 14.9 eggs on average. Annual expenditures were approximately $22 million per year for a total of $222.3 million over the 2007 through 2017 periods. The website Egg-Truth.com is an excellent resource to the misleading advertising put out by the American Egg Board.