“Have an egg roll, Mr. Goldstone,----------------------------
Have a napkin, have a chopstick, and have a chair!
Have a sparerib, Mr. Goldstone- -----------------------------
Any sparerib that I can spare, I’d be glad to share!--
Stephen Sondheim in Mr. Goldstone, I love you.-----
----------------------------------------------------1959.

Prof. B. M. Hegde,
Vice Chancellor,
MAHE Deemed University,
MANIPAL-576 119.

This was the thick headline article in one of our National dailies recently. I am sure the poultry industry would be ever grateful to the paper. We live in a world where every industry needs our assistance for the health of our economy (not human health), be it the tobacco or alcohol industry. Our media would never miss any golden opportunity to highlight their achievements. This wonderful idea that eggs lower one’s cholesterol seems to have come from a news item in last fortnight’s British Medical Journal, quoting another Journal of Nutrition. The latter is not so well known nor is it read by many doctors. So one can not find fault with the editor of the daily, anyway.

What impressed me was that the same British Medical Journal had two other important news items that did not excite our benevolent editor. The two other items were:

1) Coronary bypass surgery, immediately after a heart attack, is fraught with four fold increased risk of stroke and the latter is almost always fatal. This study, published in the most prestigious cardiology journal, Circulation, did not find a place in our daily. The Circulation study advises doctors to go slow on bypasses. The study shows, in addition, that getting admitted to a hospital with bypass facility following a heart attack is an independent risk for stroke that ranks above the other risks like high blood pressure, diabetes etc.
2) An audit of mammograms done all over the western world showed that it did not help women and is not recommended routinely, except in high risk groups, that too after the age of fifty. The well known Cochrane report.

Both these major studies, published in prestigious journals of repute, were ignored while the “egg study” was highlighted. Let us egg on to the egg study. This is a very small study done by three Chinese researchers at the Kansas State University, wherein they studied the effect of feeding a rat with eggs on the absorption of fat from the gut. They found out in an experimental study that the "lecithin" in egg reduced the amount of fat absorbed from the rat's gut. This is the long and the short of the egg study. When it comes in our National daily of repute it gets a prominent place with a picture of a plate full of eggs and the caption is very inviting in that it says that eating eggs lowers one's fat level in the blood. This has very little statistical significance to man and even if it did we have no proof that the same effect obtains in man. This kind of science is called reductionist science in that it looks at a tiny bit of the functioning of an organism and the result is then projected on to the whole organism, nay to the whole population. This type of research is now found to be liable to go wrong, sometimes with dangerous consequences!

Only one other study would be quoted here to show how fallacious rat studies could be when compared to man. Man is not a rat! There was this (in) famous study of a drug by name milrinone, released for human use after a much touted rat study where the drug showed very good results in the management of heart failure. The results were reported to be so good that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States was tricked into permitting its marketing even before any human studies were done. Even the "star performers" in Indian metropolitan cities used to use this drug at phenomenal price from the US for their "five star" patients!

When the first human study was done in the US on milrinone which went by the name PROMISE-prospective randomized milrinone survival evaluation study, in the first six months the drug treated group had 18% more deaths compared to the Placebo (an innocuous drug used for comparison) making the researchers to stop the trial. The FDA quickly banned the drug's use and there ended the saga of extrapolating rat studies to man. Whereas milrinone dilated the peripheral vessels in the rat to help heart failure, it tickled the human heart cells to work more and killed many of them which were already half dead, thereby increasing mortality instead of reducing patient death. The actions in the rat and man had nothing to do with one another.

Obviously, the large funding that the researchers get for this kind of studies come from the industry. Since reductionist science has the gold mine attached to it there is a big rush of researchers to go there! If we could look the gift horse in the mouth, lot of skeletons would fall out of the researchers’ cupboards!. This is the experience that made me write this article lest thousands of people should start eating eggs with the fond hope that their body fat levels come down! How I wish it were true!

The above mentioned rat study looked at a minor chemical in the egg, lecithin, which has the capacity to lower cholesterol in the laboratory. Although it is a good news, no one knows for certain, if that works that way in the human body. Our wonderful science is only reductionist, as noted above, looking at bits and pieces; but not the whole. Let us look at the whole egg. There is no denying the fact that egg is an excellent food when wholesome; as it is the beginning of life and naturally has all the ingredients needed to create life. Eating an egg a day might not harm anyone, but to say that it helps human health in this novel way is a bit far fetched. That said, I must hasten to add that we do not get wholesome eggs at all these days in the market. With our greed we want the birds to come to the table from the egg stage in less than three weeks. To that end lots of hormones are used in growing the chicks. To cap it we give them lots of antibiotics to keep them away from many infections that kill them in their artificial atmosphere. So both the bird on your plate and its egg would be having a good dose of the hormone (growth hormone) and antibiotics. In fact, the antibiotics, thus consumed, are one of the causes of the dreaded scenario of multi-drug resistant germs that are threatening the very existence of man on this planet! The latter has assumed such alarming proportions that four hospitals in the UK had to close down their operating rooms, as they could not get rid of such deadly germs. One hospital in Wales had to use maggots to save a patient’s leg, as the gangrene there did not respond to any antibiotic available, of which there are more than five hundred molecules at the moment. When looked at the whole egg these facts stare us in the face and the poor lecithin trying to lower our cholesterol pales into insignificance.

That apart, each egg contains nearly 210 mg of cholesterol in its yellow. Only ten per cent of the body’s total cholesterol pool comes from our diet. Ninety per cent of the cholesterol is made in our liver; (endogenous) based on the genes that we have inherited from our ancestors. We could only change that part of our cholesterol for our good by changing our parents, if that is scientifically possible and, not by any other means. Diet, egg or no egg, only contributes to ten per cent of our blood cholesterol. Eating even grass would only lower that cholesterol by ten per cent. It really does not matter what you eat as long as you keep your fat within 25% of your total calorie intake. Eat an egg every day, if that is part of the total fats that you consume, do it with relish, and enjoy good health provided the egg is wholesome. Do not, however, add an egg daily to your diet, if you are already taking your share of fat from other sources, in addition.

The best way to lower your body’s cholesterol, other than diet restrictions, is to have daily physical exercise. The latter does not only lower the cholesterol levels, but also alters its composition by increasing the so-called “good” cholesterol in place of its “bad” cousin, the low density lipoprotein cholesterol. All these hair splitting minutae have very little meaning in total nutrition of the body anyway. Please do not forget that cholesterol is very important for total health. Every single cell of the human body, of which there are around one hundred thousand billion in all, has its wall made up of cholesterol. This wall has to remain intact to prevent ageing, cancer, and all other dangerous diseases, brought on by oxidants-contents of the cell’s interior, which should not spill into the surrounding area of the cell.

Prof. Eliot Corday, one of America’s leading heart specialists, had this to say in one of his review articles, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 1983 that “if one were to avoid cholesterol all through one’s life and eat a diet very low in fat, he/she could hope to live for an extra three days to three months only!”
The science of human nutrition in the present reductionist style is very recent and is based on very shaky foundation. Scientists have been putting out alarming signals from time to time that many times contradict one another, making the common man get confused. Time was when we were asked to eat only polyunsaturated fats like margarine. Very soon they realized that margarine, after all is very bad, and the slogan “butter is better” came out.

The western literature is out to rubbish cocoanut oil as poison for human health but the truth is that it is the best fat even for infants. The fat in the baby food comes from cocoanut oil, as none of the other fats could be digested at that age. The infant does not have enough pancreatic lipase for fat digestion in the gut. Cocoanut oil gets digested in the salivary lipase in the infant’s mouth itself! The saturated fat in cocoanut oil is mostly medium chain and so is not bad, as it is being portrayed by the west. Westerners, of course, have their business interests to prop up their Soya lobby. Any fat, to be good, must be fresh and not refined. Refinement makes the fatty acids Trans-fatty acids that are bad for health. Even cocoanut oil that is rancid is Trans-fatty acid only.

Time was when we were advocating high sugar diet for diabetics to replace the body sugar that is lost. This must have killed many people. Then came the idea that diabetics must have high fat diet in place of sugar. This created many other diseases in diabetics and now we are saying that diabetics could eat a low sugar, low fat, normal diet. I do not think that this is the last word.

Ancient Indian Ayurveda has the best diet instructions. “Eat food in moderation and that which pleases the mind.” Reductionist science is veering round that view now, but very slowly. Ayurveda has recommended pure Ghee. Fruits and vegetables in plenty keep one healthy.

Gritham thejasvinam, pitha, anila haram…
Rasasoujasam………..--------------------------------
[Ghee is very good, gets rid of the bad effects of pitta and anila-improves health]

Modern biochemistry shows that ghee is pure combination of butyric and caprionic acids, and is devoid of any animal protein. The latter is the poison in milk and milk products, as it is foreign protein. Most of the allergic and autoimmune diseases, that the present man is heir to, could be traced to these animal foreign proteins. In Nature no animal drinks the milk of another species! We have more to learn from Nature than from modern science for human health.

It is not what you eat that kills you, but it is what eats you (negative thoughts) that kill you. Enjoy eating an egg happily, if you must, but do not eat other fats in addition to keep your fat intake within limits. But do not worry about what you eat, on the dining table. Your mind must be absolutely happy while eating. “Prasanna aathma, indriya, manaha, swastha ithyabhideeyathe.” Happiness, universal love and altruism keep one healthy. May all be happy and healthy.

Science must try and reduce anxiety in patients, as anxiety is the root of all problems for man. We should not add to the existing anxiety in any way. News should not be flashed immediately without studying the whole gamut of knowledge and wisdom in the field. Health related news in lay press must first be filtered through a sieve of credible medical wisdom that looks at the whole and not at the bits and pieces, which rarely make up the whole.

“ I never see an egg brought on my table but I feel,
penetrated with the wonderful change it would have
undergone but for my gluttony; it might have been
a gentle useful hen, leading her chickens with a care and
vigilance which speaks shame to many women.”
St. John de Crevecoeur. (1735-1813)