Viking Muscle
Study claims eating egg yolks is as unhealthy as smoking – Viking Muscle disagrees!
In a new study published here, researchers claim that eating egg yolks is almost as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes!
To summarize, the study states:
… The researchers found carotid plaque area increased linearly with age after age 40, but increased exponentially with pack-years of smoking and egg yolk-years. In other words, compared to age, both tobacco smoking and egg yolk consumption accelerate atherosclerosis. The study also found those eating three or more yolks a week had significantly more plaque area than those who ate two or fewer yolks per week.
This is why I have a problem accepting his ‘findings’…
When a researcher makes a claim like this based solely on correlation, he is treading into very murky waters. The article states that they have found a correlation between plaque build up, and eating egg yolks. However, what the article actually reports is that in men who are over 40, plaque build up increases faster in men who eat egg yolks over those who do not. What they do not state is what the constants were in their study:
How were the findings compared against all other men in the field of research?
How is this increased risk being measured? Is my health at some general percentage of risk greater than non yolk eaters?
Another flaw in the data, is that all men and women surveyed had an average age of 61 years old and were already being treated at a vascular prevention clinic in London… This gives some insight into the shape of their hearts and plaque build up before they even agreed to be in the study! We can’t conclude if this applies to young people or just the elderly, we can’t conclude if this is isolated to the saturated fats inside egg yolks or if this applicable to all sources of saturated fats and cholesterol. With non-specific data, we can only make assumptions, which is not the basis of any good research study.
Here is my favorite part:
… More research should be done to take in possible confounders such as exercise and waist circumference, he stresses that regular consumption of egg yolk should be avoided by persons at risk of cardiovascular disease.
Ah ha! So we know that the researcher did not do any controls for obesity or exercise… Basically what we know from this article is that potentially inactive people with a cardiovascular disease, who eat more than 3 egg yolks a day are at higher risk for plaque build up. I don’t need a research grant to confirm that!
The danger with making bad correlations is that it is limited by a single relationship between two variables (egg yolk and plaque build up), this is not a causation where one variable causes another to change. This kind of logic happens all to often in the scientific community, where two drastic trends will be closely tied to one another and conclusions are drawn from that data. For example, did you know that Facebook is directly responsible for driving the current Debt Crisis in Greece? Here is a fancy chart to prove it:
If it’s on a chart it must be true!
The truth is, this study hasn’t proven anything that we didn’t already know. I will however, caution any of my readers out there who are over 61 with heart disease, to not sit on the couch eating egg yolks, and smoking cigarettes all day…
Hail
UPDATES:
This study was funded by a Company that sells Fat Loss Drugs, that should destroy what is left of their credibility.
More reading:
Science Direct
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