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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I was a kid, eggs were bad because they had cholesterol and cholesterol was bad for your heart. Later, there were two types of cholesterol and eggs had the good kind.

It's not stopping me from enjoying my soft boiled egg. But do I understand correctly that fried eggs are less good? What about omelette? Also, who microwaves eggs?

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> do I understand correctly that fried eggs are less good?

Only if you overheat the oil or use something heavily processed. Eggs gently fried in olive or avocado oil; butter; cream; or even a good lard are fine in that we don't have strong evidence one way or another. (Of course, assuming you're healthy.)

We have pretty good evidence that increasing consumption of saturated fat increases risk of cardiovascular disease, so I’m not sure why we’d think frying eggs in lard and butter would be health promoting above frying them in a processed vegetable oil.

> We have pretty good evidence that increasing consumption of saturated fat increases risk of cardiovascular disease

We have evidence to suspect this [1]. We are not yet able to predict in which people it’s the case moreso (or at all) than others.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34649831/

This just sounds like a semantic disagreement. I believe the evidence base presented in the paper is a pretty fair representation of the field, and justifies the authors’ statement:

> the totality of the evidence supports the recommendation to limit SFA intake to <10% TDE for the general healthy population

I would call this pretty good evidence. Perhaps you wouldn’t but, as I say, that’s probably just a semantic disagreement.

> would call this pretty good evidence

Sure, I would too. I wouldn't call it strong evidence one way or another. The error bars suggest there is too much in-population variance to come up with useful general guidelines. (Frying an egg in a tablespoon of lard every day wouldn't constitute 10% TDE on a 2,000-calorie diet, for example.)

> The error bars suggest there is too much in-population variance to come up with useful general guidelines.

I’m not sure I’d agree there. What’s the argument for that?

It’s not the cholesterol itself that’s “good” or “bad”, but there are lipoproteins in the body that transport the cholesterol that have differing effects on CVD risk.

The evidence would suggest that dietary cholesterol does increase CVD risk, but the impact really tails off quickly. So if you have little to no dietary cholesterol, consuming eggs will likely raise your blood lipids. If you already have some dietary cholesterol, the impact on blood lipids will likely be small. However, I think there are genetic differences that can change the risk profile significantly.

I suspect that the main modifying effects of frying would be: 1. increasing saturated fat intake 2. increasing calorie intake

I suspect there is a bimodal distribution here.

Eggs are perfectly fine if you don't have a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol.

My genes are bad though for this so eating a 180mg of cholesterol an egg is kind of foolish. If I want to raise my cholesterol on a blood test, I can't think of anything better than eating a ton of eggs. Of course not all the cholesterol is absorbed but if even 10% is 18mg an egg I don't need.

Personally, I quit eating cheese and eggs to avoid having to be on a statin. It has worked so for on a blood test.

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