Eggs and cholesterol

[tbach24]

Eggs are cool. But I noticed that each egg has like 70% DV of cholesterol. Does this mean that eating 2-3 eggs a day is really bad for you?

[Matty]

Just eat the white.

[miajag81]

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Just eat the white.

[/ QUOTE ]

Eww.

[MarkL444]

did you think eggs were good for you?

[tbach24]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
did you think eggs were good for you?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah.

[CD56]

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Just eat the white.

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Eww.

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he's right though, the egg white has most of the good stuff (protein) and less of the bad stuff (chol)

[miajag81]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just eat the white.

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Eww.

[/ QUOTE ]

he's right though, the egg white has most of the good stuff (protein) and less of the bad stuff (chol)

[/ QUOTE ]

I know, I'm just saying the whites alone aren't nearly as good.

[Matty]

Just pretend it's scrambled jizz. mmmmm.

[BusterStacks]

I noticed this too but my doctor says you don't need to watch your cholestoral intake unless you already have a problem, which seems odd now that I say it /images/graemlins/confused.gif Either way, eggs are delicious and cholestoral problems are often easily remedied.

[Jimbo]

Cutting back on shellfish and Guacamole will do more good than reducing your intake of eggs.

[tbach24]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
Cutting back on shellfish and Guacamole will do more good than reducing your intake of eggs.

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Is shrimp really bad for you? That's the only shellfish I really eat anymore. I hate guac.

TY to BusterStacks for that info.

[tbach24]

Okay, new question.

Which is better for me, pb &amp; j or fried egg sandwich?

[Cosimo]

Bleh, it's sickening. Search for 'cholesterol', what do you get? "Eggs are evil, omg!" Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dietary cholesterol intake is absolutely irrelevant.

Lowering dietary cholesterol will not affect serum cholesterol. Eat all the eggs you want; it won't affect your cholesterol levels. Imbalanced (too low or too high) cholesterol levels are a symptom of other problems, not the problem itself.

Different countries have signifigantly different rates for heart disease as well as dietary intake of fat, vitamins, oils, cholesterol, and everything else -- but within a country, disease is not correlated with intake. This is the problem -- you can't take Americans, feed them olives and feta cheese, and make them healthy. You've actually got to move them to Greece. Maybe it's getting sexxed in the butt, who knows.

So, like, move to Europe or something.

http://www.omen.com/corr.html
http://www.ravnskov.nu/myth4.htm

The majority of serum cholesterol is produced by your own body. Your liver produces 2000 mg a day; one egg has a bit over 200g. It's a precursor for Vitamin D and for bile acids used in the digestion of fats. It's also a precursor for testosterone, so manly men eat their eggs. :P It's actually a precursor for all of the sex and adrenal steroids.

"There is no correlation between high dietary cholesterol intake and high cholesterol levels in the blood. Neither is there any correlation between high cholesterol intake and heart disease. There is some (though over-rated) correlation between high serum cholesterol and heart disease." I've seen and heard this many times; still hunting for research papers for this atm.

Cholesterol levels less than 180 are associated with serious increases in stroke, liver cancer, lung disease, and depression.

Eat your eggs and red meat -- tho don't overcook the meat or trim the fat, and try to find grain-fed (not oil-fed) beef.

EDIT: sex hormones.

[emil3000]

[ QUOTE ]
Bleh, it's sickening. Search for 'cholesterol', what do you get? "Eggs are evil, omg!" Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dietary cholesterol intake is absolutely irrelevant.

Lowering dietary cholesterol will not affect serum cholesterol. Eat all the eggs you want; it won't affect your cholesterol levels. Imbalanced (too low or too high) cholesterol levels are a symptom of other problems, not the problem itself.

Different countries have signifigantly different rates for heart disease as well as dietary intake of fat, vitamins, oils, cholesterol, and everything else -- but within a country, disease is not correlated with intake. This is the problem -- you can't take Americans, feed them olives and feta cheese, and make them healthy. You've actually got to move them to Greece. Maybe it's getting sexxed in the butt, who knows.

So, like, move to Europe or something.

http://www.omen.com/corr.html
http://www.ravnskov.nu/myth4.htm

The majority of serum cholesterol is produced by your own body. Your liver produces 2000 mg a day; one egg has a bit over 200g. It's a precursor for Vitamin D and for bile acids used in the digestion of fats. It's also a precursor for testosterone, so manly men eat their eggs. :P It's actually a precursor for all of the sex and adrenal steroids.

"There is no correlation between high dietary cholesterol intake and high cholesterol levels in the blood. Neither is there any correlation between high cholesterol intake and heart disease. There is some (though over-rated) correlation between high serum cholesterol and heart disease." I've seen and heard this many times; still hunting for research papers for this atm.

Cholesterol levels less than 180 are associated with serious increases in stroke, liver cancer, lung disease, and depression.

Eat your eggs and red meat -- tho don't overcook the meat or trim the fat, and try to find grain-fed (not oil-fed) beef.

EDIT: sex hormones.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just wanted to add that cholesterol is part of the transport system for fat in the bloodstream, thus, more fat that needs to be transported brings more cholesterol. This means that watching your fat intake is a lot more important with regards to serum cholesterol.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Just eat the white.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.eggbeaters.com

[Claunchy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Bleh, it's sickening. Search for 'cholesterol', what do you get? "Eggs are evil, omg!" Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dietary cholesterol intake is absolutely irrelevant.

Lowering dietary cholesterol will not affect serum cholesterol. Eat all the eggs you want; it won't affect your cholesterol levels. Imbalanced (too low or too high) cholesterol levels are a symptom of other problems, not the problem itself.

Different countries have signifigantly different rates for heart disease as well as dietary intake of fat, vitamins, oils, cholesterol, and everything else -- but within a country, disease is not correlated with intake. This is the problem -- you can't take Americans, feed them olives and feta cheese, and make them healthy. You've actually got to move them to Greece. Maybe it's getting sexxed in the butt, who knows.

So, like, move to Europe or something.

http://www.omen.com/corr.html
http://www.ravnskov.nu/myth4.htm

The majority of serum cholesterol is produced by your own body. Your liver produces 2000 mg a day; one egg has a bit over 200g. It's a precursor for Vitamin D and for bile acids used in the digestion of fats. It's also a precursor for testosterone, so manly men eat their eggs. :P It's actually a precursor for all of the sex and adrenal steroids.

"There is no correlation between high dietary cholesterol intake and high cholesterol levels in the blood. Neither is there any correlation between high cholesterol intake and heart disease. There is some (though over-rated) correlation between high serum cholesterol and heart disease." I've seen and heard this many times; still hunting for research papers for this atm.

Cholesterol levels less than 180 are associated with serious increases in stroke, liver cancer, lung disease, and depression.

Eat your eggs and red meat -- tho don't overcook the meat or trim the fat, and try to find grain-fed (not oil-fed) beef.

EDIT: sex hormones.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just wanted to add that cholesterol is part of the transport system for fat in the bloodstream, thus, more fat that needs to be transported brings more cholesterol. This means that watching your fat intake is a lot more important with regards to serum cholesterol.

[/ QUOTE ]
Specifically watch your trans fat intake, as it not only raises your LDL (bad) cholesterol, but simultaneously reduces levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.

Margarine bad.

[Ed Miller]

Why don't you go to the doctor and have your cholesterol and blood pressure checked. If it's ok, keep doing what you're doing. If it's not, then worry about if you need to change your diet.

[emil3000]

[ QUOTE ]
Specifically watch your trans fat intake, as it not only raises your LDL (bad) cholesterol, but simultaneously reduces levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.

Margarine bad.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never got a decent explanation for this, you know one?

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

So long as your cholesterol level is within normal limits, you have little to worry about with the eggs. Check with your doc.

[augie00]

Why do you care? You're like 12, you can have all the crap you want to eat.

[tbach24]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
Why do you care? You're like 12, you can have all the crap you want to eat.

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Well this morning I was going to go make my fried eggs for breakfast and my brother told me eggs were bad for me and since my parents were asleep/at work (I dont remember which) I was forced to ask OOT for the answer.

[Cosimo]

[ QUOTE ]
The majority of serum cholesterol is produced by your own body. Your liver produces 2000 mg a day; one egg has a bit over 200g.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oops. Liver produces 2,000 mg, and an egg is 200 mg. An egg is 1/10th of your daily production.

[Cosimo]

omg this is long.

First: the studies that showed reduced heart disease from low-cholesterol, low-fat diets showed an increase in other diseases: strokes, cancer, suicide, and violent death. Yet these studies did ten things at once, and low cholesterol intake itself has not been correlated with heart health.

I found it amusing that trying to save yourself from heart disease would lead, instead, to suicide. /images/graemlins/smile.gif The reason is that cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter. Low cholesterol levels leads to aggression and depression, hence more violent deaths and suicides.

Cholesterol is found in atheriosclerotic plaques because cholesterol is good at repairing damaged artery walls. The problem isn't cholesterol, it's the damage -- which is accumulated free radical damage or vitamin C deficiency.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Specifically watch your trans fat intake, as it not only raises your LDL (bad) cholesterol, but simultaneously reduces levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.

Margarine bad.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never got a decent explanation for this, you know one?

[/ QUOTE ]

First, some backstory.

Cholesterol sometimes acts as a fat-transport steroid. You might be familiar with the general axiom that fat is less dense than muscle tissue (protein). When cholesterol is carrying lipids, its density goes down. When it's not carrying lipids, it's high-density. Hence HDL and LDL (high- or low-density lipoproteins, "lipid" means fat). If your LDL/HDL ratio is high, that means that there's a lot of cholesterol in your blood that is carrying fats around.

A fat molecule (fatty acid) is basically a long carbon chain with a carboxyl (COOH) at one end. A triglyceride is a glycerol with the carboxyls from three fatty acids attached to the oxygen atoms in the glycerol. (Triglycerides in the blood are not from dietary fat, though; they are formed in the liver from blood sugar.)

The carboxyl end of a fatty acid will disolve in water, while the other end (a methyl group) is hydrophobic and will instead disolve in oils. ("Oil and water don't mix.") Fatty acids are the main component in soap (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/) cuz one end bonds with dirt and oil while the other end disolves in water and carries that oil right out of your clothes.

So, back to fatty acids. You have a long carbon chain. Each carbon (except for the ends) is connected to two other carbons and two hydrogen atoms. Sometimes, two of the carbons in a chain will bind closely together (a double bond), meaning that they each drop a hydrogen. A saturated fat has its full complement of hydrogens, which means no double bonds. A mono-unsaturated fat has one double bond, and a poly-unsaturated fat has two or more double bonds. The whole 'saturated' bit just refers to whether the molecule has a full complement of hydrogen atoms.

The carbon chains of fatty acids are normally straight. When there's a double bond, a bend forms (due to electrochemical factors). The double bond can form in one of two ways: cis or trans (http://tooldoc.wncc.edu/lipid10.JPG) (cis is the top one). In the cis configuration, the chain curves because the two hydrogen atoms that are dropped are dropped from the same side. In the trans configuration, the hydrogens drop from opposite sides, so there's a kink in the chain. A curving fatty acid prevents multiple molecules from packing tightly together; hence, cis fatty acids tend to be liquids (oils). Trans fatty acids are more rigid than straight chains alone, so they're solids at room temperature (fat). This liquid/solid distinction is the difference between what we call an oil and what gets called a fat.

Virtually all naturally occuring and produced unsaturated fats are in the cis configuration. Trans fats are produced either by heating cis fats or by hydrogenization (bubbling hydrogen through an oil at high temperature with a bit of trace solvent that probably also picked up some of the pesticides applied to the source seed). Note that you can't trans-ify a saturated fat.

Fatty acids can be named by the location of the first double bond (from the methyl, or omega, end). Hence, Omega-3, -6, and -9 fats. There's not a strong correlation here between good and bad; some of each are good. However, the balance between them is important because they interefere with each other in important metabolic reaction. Note that most oils have a ton of different fats in them; what differs between (say) corn oil and olive oil is which fatty acids are prevelant.

Alrighty, so trans fats are rigid. Why is that bad?

(1) Because cell membranes are formed by two phospholipid layers (a phospholipid is a triglyceride where one of the fatty acids has been replaced by a phosphate). When the membrane is rigid, it interferes with transport through the cell membrane, screwing up cell metabolism, letting the bad guys in and keeping the good guys out, mutating DNA, and all the rest.

(2) Trans fats inhibit the production of the prostoglandin-1 and -3 families of hormones, which are good guys. They fight infection, tumors, high blood pressure, and other bad stuff.

(3) Some studies suggest that trans fats are carcinogens, although the mechanism is currently unknown. This might be related to prostoglandin-2 hormones, uninhibited by trans fats; by increased free radical production caused by the trans configuration; or by the interference in cell membrane function.

Final note: until recently, trans fats were lumped in with saturated fats in research studies, hence a lot of undeserved finger-pointing at saturated fats.

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Good: dietary cholesterol, saturated fat, tropical oils (olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil).

Bad: trans fats, plant oils.