Health expert tells consumers to ‘Eat as many eggs as you want’

Dr Tania Markovic
Dr Tania Markovic

Eat as many eggs as you want! That is the advice of a health expert who has just revealed initial findings from a study into the impact of egg consumption on diabetes.

Dr Tania Markovic, director of metabolism and obesity services and senior staff specialist in the department of endocrinology at the Royal Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Australia, has rubbished the idea that people should restrict their egg consumption for the benefit of their health. During a speech at the inaugural International Egg Nutrition Symposium in Edinburgh, she said, “I think it’s a joke the way we talk about how many eggs we can have in a week.”

Dr Markovic told those who attended the symposium that restrictions were not advised on the consumption of other foods and they should not be suggested for eggs. “We don’t do this about apples, we don’t do this about how many rashers of bacon we can have in a day or week,” she said. “My thinking is you can have as many eggs as you want. Egg is just another source of protein; it’s instead of fish, meat, beans, whatever. They’re healthy. I’m all for it.”

Dr Markovic has been conducting a controlled study looking into the effect of high egg consumption on obese people with type two diabetes or pre-diabetes. Volunteers taking part in the scheme were divided into two groups. One group ate a high egg diet and the other a low egg diet. Previous research had produced conflicting results, leading to suggestions that people with the condition should limit their egg intake, but Dr Markovic said her study indicated that diabetics should not be concerned about eating eggs.

Dr Tia Rains, senior director of nutrition and communications with the Egg Nutrition Center in the United States
Dr Tia Rains, senior director of nutrition and communications with the Egg Nutrition Center in the United States

“Our conclusions are that eggs did not have an adverse effect on lipid levels in people with type two diabetes,” she said. “Increased egg intake was associated with better appetite control and these findings suggest that a high egg diet can be included as part of the diet in management of type two diabetes,” said Dr Markovic, who said that the study involved nearly 140 volunteers. The research was funded by Australian Egg Corporation (AECL), although Dr Markovic said that the funding had not influence the work in any way. A total of 66 people completed the high egg diet, eating two eggs a day at breakfast for six days. Some 62 people completed the low egg diet. They ate fewer than two eggs a day but made up their protein intake by eating lean animal protein.

Dr Tia Rains, senior director of nutrition and communications with the Egg Nutrition Center in the United States, told delegates at the symposium that diabetes was actually one medical condition that may possibly be eased through the consumption of eggs. She said that after years in which the consumption of carbohydrates had increased because of warnings about eating fat, new thinking suggested that people’s health could benefit from reducing carbohydrates and increasing consumption of good proteins like eggs, milk and whey protein.

She said that the benefits of a protein diet included greater weight loss, lower body mass index, reduced blood pressure and improved vascular health. She said that eggs could also benefit people who suffered from metabolic syndrome - a condition that included a number of symptoms, including high blood pressure and high glucose levels. “Substituting high quality protein for carbohydrate is advantageous for health,” she said.

Dr Mitch Kanter, director of the Egg Nutrition Center, said it was a good time to be involved in eggs. “There are a lot of things going on that have positive implications for eggs,” said Mitch, referring to a series of studies that have pointed to the significant health benefits that can be obtained from eating eggs. He said eggs were nutrient dense, yet they had less calories per serving than whole milk, ground beef, pork and chicken.

He said that over the last 50 years people had been advised to eat less

fat and they had replaced fat consumption with carbohydrates. During that time people had got fatter to the point where obesity rates were increasing in most developed and developing countries. “People are now asking, ‘Have we got it wrong?’” He said it was now thought that cholesterol was “not the boogeyman” after all. Sugar and processed carbohydrates were the new culprit.

The symposium was staged during the conference of the International Egg Commission (IEC) in Edinburgh. The event was organised by the International Egg Nutrition Consortium (IENC), which was, itself, set up by the IEC to provide IEC member countries with a means of sharing health, nutrition and research information and advice. Any country with membership of the IEC is able to join the IENC. Mitch Kanter said that the inaugural symposium had been organised solely for delegates to the IEC conference, but it was hoped that in future it would be broadened so that it was open to anyone with an interest in nutrition.

There were four speakers in all at the inaugural event. As well as Mitch Kanter, Tania Markovic and Tia Rains, delegates also heard from Dr Marta Miguel Castro of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, who is a researcher for the Institute of Food Science Research of the the Spanish Research Council. She spoke about certain bioactive components in

eggs that could help in the future management of health conditions like hypertension and health complications associated with metabolic syndrome.