Your Paleo Is Showing

There are very few things in life more satisfying than an omelet. Throw in some bacon (of course), a big heaping helping of diced veggies and it's party time. By the way, you really owe it to yourself to try the Obamlet. There's a reason you've probably never heard of it before, and that's because I made it up (the name anyway). Super easy, super tasty. It's just an onion bacon omelet. O-Ba-mlet get it? I slay me... Anyhow, my creativity and wit aren't the focus, eggs are.

When I first learned about paleo, I remember being a bit surprised at how much it was encouraged to eat eggs on a regular basis as a great source of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. But they're high in cholesterol and fat and contribute to heart disease. Doesn't the bad outweigh the good in this situation? Well, you'll be happy to learn that this is not likely according to more recent studies.

Cholesterol. It's a dirty word. There's good, there's bad, and people are always trying to get rid of it. Why? Because what person in their right mind wants to have heart disease? Better not to take any chances and just avoid it altogether. This is an assumption a lot of people make that is not actually founded in anything other than their own preconceived notions about how the body works. It's exactly the same type of argument as saying that eating fat will make you fat. The body can and does make cholesterol all on its own whether or not you eat it, but here's a fun fact for you. Only about 1/3 of the total cholesterol in the blood comes from diet alone. The general consensus is that the ratio of fats you consume has a lot more of an impact on LDL levels in the blood. Really, they're talking about saturated fats, which is a whole other blog topic. Click here to read it when you're all done with this one!

We're not off the hook yet, though. A large-scale Harvard epidemiological study has implicated egg consumption with prostate cancer. They followed 27,600 men over the course of 14 years to follow their eating habits and have concluded that eating 2.5 eggs or more per week increases one's chances of getting prostate cancer by 81%. That's HUGE! They checked in with each person twice per year and asked them to give them an estimate of the types of meats they ate on a regular basis. Here were the categories: total red meat, processed red meat, unprocessed red meat, total poultry and eggs. As you might guess, these are incredibly broad categories that really don't differentiate between the quality of meats and more importantly, the types of foods consumed along with them. Not only that, but you're relying on a person's 6 month memory and honesty. Have you ever tried to remember what you ate a week ago? Yeah, I forgot what I had too! I understand that in a study this large and spread out, that more regular check-ins and precise guidelines are harder to manage and keep track of, but if you're going implicate a food in causing cancer, it is your responsibility as a member of the scientific community to make sure the data is accurate. I didn't mention this before, but the supposed reason eggs were linked to prostate cancer was the amount of cholesterol contained in them. This came out in December, some time after the earlier studies showed that dietary cholesterol didn't affect total levels in the blood. Knowing that, we can't say that the cholesterol causes the cancer. It's yet another case of confusing correlation and actual cause and effect.

So back to actually eating, because that's what matters for us. Here's where it gets iffy. How much is too much when it comes to eating eggs? Some sources say eating 'up to' one egg per day is fine (though they also endorse whole wheat as part of a "heart healthy" diet), others say you could eat as many as you want and it won't be damaging to your health. There's a happy medium somewhere in there and as with most things, it may very well be different for each person. One is definitely not enough for me, but if I ate as many eggs as I wanted every day, I'd probably grow feathers and start laying them myself. On the bright side, I'd probably never have to worry about buying them anymore after that!

When conventional wisdom is out of date and incorrect, it needs to be changed. Some progressive thinking on the part of the British Heart Foundation. They took the new info about cholesterol into account and revised their original recommendations from the standard 3 eggs per week to be much less restrictive. I can only hope a similar trend follows here in the states, but we'll see. I won't be holding my breath on that one.