A week ago I attended a session at the Texas Dietetic Association’s annual meeting. Besides being shocked by the fact that Texas has 18 different local dietetic association’s compared to the one I know and love, the District of Columbia Dietetic Association where nearly all members can make it to a meeting with 30 minutes, I was impressed with the unique structure of the sessions. Every session appeared to be sponsored by some industry however the speakers were professional and credible.
Neva Cochran a registered dietitian from Dallas and I presented a talk titled: “Dietary Fats and Heart Health: Examining the Latest Science and Communicating Dietary Guidance”. We were lucky to have a good lead in from the speaker before us, Jim Painter PhD, RD Chair, School of Family & Consumer Sciences Eastern Illinois University who spoke about the” Top 10 Food to Avoid Heart Disease”. His first comments where that the US Dietary Guidelines had made a mistake about their recommendations regarding limiting eggs to one a day. He felt that eggs were not proven to be a risk factor for heart disease and should not be limited at all.
Needless to say, Neva Cochran’s talk that focused on dispelling nutrition myths including the myth that dietary cholesterol is a proven risk factor for heart disease confirmed what Dr. Painter had said. I followed Neva’s presentation with a look at the scientific developments that led to the incorrect assumption that egg intake increased heart disease risk and a new look at biomarkers for heart disease that RDs should consider when evaluating risk factors for heart disease. I included a slide from my travels in Australia that showed a menu board from a fish and chip shack near Coogie Beach. The menu proudly states that they fry in cholesterol- free cottonseed oil which of course is a highly saturated oil that would be a greater risk factor for heart disease than dietary cholesterol. This is the important point I tried to convey to the audience of about 300 Texas dietitians: that when a substance is removed from the diet, it always has an unintended consequence. In the past, telling the public to avoid eggs led to a misunderstanding that all the essential nutrients in an egg like high quality protein, lutein, choline and vitamin D were not as important as the dietary cholesterol and it would be safer to eat a substitute food that often was a greater risk factor, such as refined grains.
