…I wanted to highlight eggs since they are a food many people don't eat, thinking about the cholesterol.
It used to be, when I was brand-new to this profession, I was taught to tell people to avoid eggs. Because of the cholesterol.
It turns out, the cholesterol in eggs has been shown to not increase serum cholesterol, and taking eggs out of your diet doesn't really decrease your cholesterol.
Besides that, eggs…
…are cheap. …have one of the highest quality proteins available. …are one of the very few foods contain choline (in the yolk), which is very important for maintaining memory, potentially reducing your risk for Alzheimer's disease. …are a good source of vitamin B-12, another nutrient that isn't always easy to get. …are convenient to eat. …if you get the omega-3 kind, can be a source of DHA, which is not easy to get in your diet if you don't like or don't have access to fish.
So have fun with your holiday and take advantage of the fact that you've got all those boiled eggs in the frig. Have them for breakfast. Put them on your salad at lunch.
And know it's something good you're doing for yourself!
I finished up my nutrition education during the height of cholesterol phobia/low fat mania. The message we were taught to teach about egg yolks dies hard.
Several years ago colleague Susan Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., shared in a presentation I attended, that there really isn't hard research that shows, without a doubt, that eating egg yolks increases cholesterol. Neither is there really evidence to show that removing egg yolks from your diet reduces cholesterol. Other dietary choices, such as the ones we teach on this blog, are far more effective at normalizing your blood lipid tests.
Eggs are such a cheap, easy source of protein. Scrambling them with vegetables is my favorite way to clean out my vegetable bin.
If you're trying to increase and maintain your vitamin D levels, keep in mind that it is found in egg yolks. And the levels of vitamin D in egg yolks, according to the US Agricultural Research Service, is higher than thought. Each large standard egg contains 41 IU.
If you're still not convinced and questioning, consider that this same analysis showed that the amount of cholesterol in eggs is 14% lower than previously reported, 185 milligrams per egg.
Egg yolks also contain choline, the precursor for acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter involved in memory. It's not easy to find in food…if brain fog and memory are problems your PCOS has brought you, perhaps rethinking your relationship with egg yolks could be helpful.
I'm not sure what the change is, perhaps farmers have been changing the composition of poultry feed in response to the dietary concerns of their customers.
Whatever it is, I'm hoping the new results in a few more egg yolks showing up on diet diaries I review here in the office!
I'm not at all a fan of the Food Guide Pyramid or the new My Pyramid. I know too much about the politics of how each food got its position in the diagram. And I know that the concept is promoted by the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Health and Human Services. So it's really about marketing commodities at least as much, if not more than, promoting healthy eating.
Last year at this time it occurred to me that eating patriotically (if you are a citizen of the United States, France, Chile, Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom, to name a few), is a fun way to think about what constitutes a healthy choice.
So I went to Google to see if there was anything under the term,"food flag". I found this:
Sausage and pasta were not really what I had in mind, so I scrolled further, and found this:
Absolutely not what I wanted to communicate!
So…I had a little fun and I made my own. I hope you like it!
I posted a bigger version on my website, feel free to use it as long as you keep the copyright notice intact in the lower righthand corner. You can find it at www.afterthediet.com/foodflag.htm.
Aaahhh eggs, the misunderstood member of the nutrition family. Poor guys…when I graduated from college, in the height of the low cholesterol-low fat craze, we were indoctrinated to teach that"egg" was just another word for poison.
My how things have changed!
A couple of months ago I heard Dr. Susan Kleiner (www.goodmooddiet.com) speak at a conference. She shared that not once has there been a research study demonstrating that when you take eggs out of the diet, that this dietary change reduces cholesterol. As well, there has been research demonstrating that adding eggs (plus yolks) to the diet does NOT raise cholesterol. All those yolks I threw down the drain all those years…for nothing.
I figured I'd better find some hard research to back THAT one up, so here's a quick list of interesting titles I found in PubMed: Dietary cholesterol from eggs increases plasma HDL cholesterol in overweight men consuming a carbohydrate-restricted diet Egg yolk improves lipid profile, lipid peroxidation and retinal abnormalities in a murine model of genetic hypercholesterolemia. There are many more, but here I just wanted to make my point. Egg yolks are not the ugly stepchild of the protein family anymore.
In fact, there are some great nutrients to be found in eggs.
1. Lutein and xeanthin are two carotenoid compounds that can help maintain visual health. One group of researchers reported that 6 eggs per week can help increase lutein and xeanthin levels in the macula, the part of the eye that degenerates in this country's leading cause of blindness, macular degeneration.
2. Eggs contain choline. This compound is very important for brain function. Choline is the building block for acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter involved in memory, and the one that many Alzheimer's medications seek to increase.
This compound is exceedingly hard to get in the diet. In fact, about the only two places you can find it, are egg yolks, and soy. (Well, also in cooked chicken, beef, veal, and turkey livers, but I didn't think that would have any of you running for your grocery lists so it goes in parentheses.)
If you've got PCOS, you've probably been told to avoid soy. So that leaves egg yolks for getting this very important memory booster.
3. If you hate fish but you need to increase your fish-based omega-3 intake, omega-3 eggs are a very cost-effective option. If you struggle to get enough vegetables in your diet, omelets and frittatas are great ways to get them in. Just be sure you use olive oil when you cook them.
I thought it might be timely to include eggs on this blog, because as food prices rise, they can certainly be much more cost-effective than salmon, as well as other proteins that are now taxing your grocery bill.
Mutungi G, Ratliff J, Puglisi M, Torres-Gonzalez M, Vaishnav U, Leite JO, Quann E, Volek JS, Fernandez ML. Dietary cholesterol from eggs increases plasma HDL cholesterol in overweight men consuming a carbohydrate-restricted diet. J Nutr. 2008 Feb;138(2):272-6.
Fernández-Robredo P, Rodríguez JA, Sádaba LM, Recalde S, García-Layana A. Egg yolk improves lipid profile, lipid peroxidation and retinal abnormalities in a murine model of genetic hypercholesterolemia. J Nutr Biochem. 2008 Jan;19(1):40-8.
Wenzel AJ, Gerweck C, Barbato D, Nicolosi RJ, Handelman GJ, Curran-Celentano J. A 12-wk egg intervention increases serum zeaxanthin and macular pigment optical density in women. J Nutr. 2006 Oct;136(10):2568-73.
Goodrow EF, Wilson TA, Houde SC, Vishwanathan R, Scollin PA, Handelman G, Nicolosi RJ. Consumption of one egg per day increases serum lutein and zeaxanthin concentrations in older adults without altering serum lipid and lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. J Nutr. 2006 Oct;136(10):2519-24.
