Sydney: Busting the age-old myth, researchers at the University of Sydney have found that eating up to 12 eggs per week for a year does not increase cardiovascular risk factors in people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
Published in the recent edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the research, found that cardiovascular levels remained unchanged among people embarking on a high-egg (12 eggs per week) or low-egg (less than two eggs per week) diet.
"Despite differing advice around safe levels of egg consumption for people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, our research indicates that people do not need to hold back from eating eggs, if this is part of a healthy diet," said Dr Nick Fuller from the University's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders at the Charles Perkins Centre, who led the study.
"A healthy diet as prescribed in this study emphasised on replacing saturated fats (such as butter) with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (such as avocado and olive oil)," Dr Fuller told the Science Daily.
"While eggs themselves are high in dietary cholesterol and people with type 2 diabetes tend to have higher levels of 'bad' low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, this study supports the existing research that consumption of eggs has little effect on the levels of cholesterol in the blood of people eating them," Dr Fuller explained.
He said the findings were important due to potential health benefits of eggs for people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, as well as the general population.
"Eggs are a source of protein and micronutrients that could support a range of health and dietary factors, including helping to regulate the intake of fat and carbohydrate, eye and heart health, healthy blood vessels and healthy pregnancies."
"Interestingly, people on both the high egg and low egg diets lost an equivalent amount of weight - and continued to lose weight after the three month intended weight loss phase had ended," he added.(UNI)