Have some bacon and eggs while you ponder this.
Every five years, the government updates its Dietary Guidelines to help citizens make healthier food choices. One of the six core goals since the 1970s has been to limit the intake of cholesterol to less than 300mg/day, about the amount in one egg.
The nation's top nutrition advisors, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, have decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, which could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption, according to The Washington Post.
The greater danger, experts now believe, lies not in foods including eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods loaded with saturated fat, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter.
Major studies have indicated that eating an egg a day does not raise a healthy person’s risk of heart disease, though diabetic patients may be at more risk.
Over time, scientists have learned that the body creates cholesterol in amounts much larger than diet provides, that the body regulates how much is in the blood and that there is both “good” and “bad” cholesterol.
Confused?
“Eggs are a nearly perfect food, but cholesterol is a potential bad guy,” said Lawrence Rudel, a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “Eating too much a day won’t harm everyone, but it will harm some people.”
The panel's report will be sent to Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to decide which recommendations to incorporate in the final set of dietary guidelines, due at the end of this year.
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