Scientists get egg on their faces - Chicago Tribune

Cholesterol, defamed for more than three decades by nutritional science, subject of countless warnings to egg-craving Americans, has now been exonerated as Public Food Enemy No 1. The nation's top nutrition advisory panel has dropped charges against dietary cholesterol, recommending that it can no longer be considered a "nutrient of concern."


The new thinking: scarfing down cholesterol-chocked delicacies does not appear to significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood for many people. It won't spike the risk of a heart attack, if they don't also gorge on foods high in still-hazardous-to-your-health saturated fats and trans fats.
To which we say: Grrrrr. All those years of snubbing scrambled eggs! All those guilty gulpings of cholesterol-chocked grilled shrimp! All that angst, guilt, paranoia ... for what?

Current U.S. guidelines tell Americans to restrict cholesterol to 300 milligrams a day. But it turns out there hasn't been much scientific evidence lately to bolster four decades of dire warnings about cholesterol. Studies "were mostly historic, inadequately designed and insufficient in number" to make such a strong anti-cholesterol statement, University of Colorado medical professor Robert Eckel tells us.


Why did this conclusion take so many years? "It's just one of those things that gets carried forward and carried forward even though the evidence is minimal," Eckel told The Washington Post.