Ah the lowly, lovely egg. If you know me you know I am a big fan of the egg for it’s versatility, flavor, and health attritbutes. After all it’s a perfect food, plenty of protein, low in calories, some good healthy fat and the kind of cholesterol that helps, not hurts, our over all system.
So when I got this Health Alert this morning from HSI Baltimore had to share.”Egg-Irony” – that’s how ScienceDaily referred to a new study that shows how egg consumption might alleviate a heart disease risk factor.
If you have high blood pressure, your doctor has probably pressed you to take an ACE inhibitor drug.
A couple of eggs each day might do just as well.
Two researchers at Canada’s University of Alberta recently ran lab tests to determine if consumption of fried eggs or boiled eggs would produce greater amounts of ACE inhibitory peptides.
I’ll cut to the chase: The fried eggs won.
In a recent issue of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry the authors write: “Our results showed that in vitro digestion of cooked eggs could generate a number of potent ACE inhibitory peptides which may have implications for cardiovascular disease prevention, including hypertension.”
One of the physicians on the board of the HSI panel is Dr. Allan Spreen M.D. He’s got what some consider controversial views but he always has mainstream science to back them up so let’s see what he had to say about this egg irony.
The author of the Health Alert newsletter introduced him this way: “HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., kindly sent me the info about the Alberta egg study. But even more valuable was his commentary. Stand back and give him some swinging room. Dr. Spreen takes no prisoners in this one. ”
Dr. Spreen: “Actually, neither egg nor cholesterol ingestion has ever had anything to do with either hypertension or hypercholesterolemia [high cholesterol]. There is no correlation between oral intake of cholesterol and serum levels (I also firmly believe there’s no connection between serum levels and heart disease, but that’s an argument for another time).
“If you never eat cholesterol your body will manufacture it (or you die), and the ‘manufactured’ variety is more readily deposited in vessel walls.
“Eggs are wonderful food, always have been, and that includes the yolk (rare good source of sulfur).
Well there you have it. More good news on one of nature’s perfect, portable, frickin’ wonderfully delicious foods. Of course human trials will have to be done to prove that the heart disease protection extends to us as well as the lucky test tube organisms that had eggs for breakfast each day. But this study should at least lend some credence to the idea that eggs are not going to kill you!
What’s on your breakfast plate?
