Updated January 31, 2016
In my June 2015 newsletter article, “There Are Lies and Damned Lies: Damned Lies Harm the Public and Planet Earth,” I expressed my outrage over an “Opinion” piece in the June 23/24, 2015 Journal of the American Medical Association. The article applauded the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s (DGAC) recommendation for the “elimination of dietary cholesterol as a ‘nutrient of concern’…and the absence of an upper limit on total fat consumption.” The JAMA article was referring to the updated 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in January of 2016. Previous US Dietary Guidelines had recommended that people consume less than 300 mg per day of dietary cholesterol, which is about one large egg.
Appreciable amounts of cholesterol are only found in animal products, from tunas to turkeys. Of all the foods commonly consumed as part of the rich Western diet, eggs contain the highest concentrations of cholesterol: eight times more than beef. Traditionally, in scientific studies on humans, eggs have been used as the source to demonstrate the adverse effects of cholesterol on our health and our heart arteries. For this reason the egg industry has taken the lead in misleading the public (including physicians) about the harmful effects of eggs, which are poisonous when consumed in the high amounts typical of American diets.