4 ms·

Eggs had a rough go of it in the 90s. There were studies where it seemed like even looking at an egg would cause your cholesterol to sky rocket and kill you.

by bena 2y ago

colechristensen 2y ago
The fed a bunch of cholesterol to rabbits who then got heart disease. But it turns out you’re not a rabbit and dietary cholesterol has nowhere near the same effect on humans.
- Filligree 2y ago
  And also rabbits do not normally eat eggs, in fact aren’t even carnivores.
  - fifticon 2y ago
    how do you explain easter egg bunnies then??
- jandrese 2y ago
  Who could have ever guessed that a herbivore would be poorly adapted to high amounts of cholesterol in their diet?
lynx97 2y ago
One item on the rather long list of dietary advice/findings that have turned out to be wrong or overstated. Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". A local cabarettist had a 10 minute piece about this already 15 years ago. It seems, most dietary advice holds roughly 10 years, until someone else publishes another "study" and the press picks up on it to "entertain" the masses. Remember spinace and its supposed iron content? Or the milk industry doing an ad compaign (for decades!) to promote milk for school kids? The former was a misplaced comma, IIRC. And the latter was a blatant attempt to sell more product.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  > Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". Seems like a bit of confirmation bias here - tons of things that people were told would kill them, did in fact end up killing them. Science is wrong sometimes, of course, and science journalism even more often.
  - lynx97 2y ago
    Well, eggs just triggered me. I am from the "I will stop eating eggs when there are no chickens anymore" team... And sure, you're definitely right. Learning about and eliminating aspestos, for instance, was probably one of the bigger well known positive counter-example from the previous century. However, I can't think of many great counter-examples when it comes to dietary advice and the science journalism (thanks for the word) attached to it. Maybe you can poke a hole in my confimraton bias?
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Drinking too much soda with sugar? Now the acidity in artificially sweetened soda makes peoples' teeth bad. My dentist mother is furious about that people believe that it is only the sugar in the soda that is bad for the teeth.
- soperj 2y ago
  the misplaced comma was also a myth. https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popeye_March_2010.pdf https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popey...
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". This is where I am for sure. I don't trust any trends as to what people figure will kill you any more, because they're almost always wrong in the end. In 20 years if it turns out to not be recanted, then I'll pay attention I guess.
toast0 2y ago
Thankfully, they were let out of prison. https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34447709/bad-rap/california-egg-commission https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34447709/bad... (circa 1991??)
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> There were studies where it seemed like even looking at an egg would cause your cholesterol to sky rocket and kill you. Except there really weren't studies, and this is why the nutrition "science" was so bad back then. A sibling comment mentioned a study in rabbits and points out the obvious problems with making conclusions based on a herbivore, but the general belief was that since high blood cholesterol was linked with heart disease, eating a lot of cholesterol is bad for you. When they actually did to the studies, they found that the vast majority of people do not get high blood cholesterol from (reasonable amounts of) dietary cholesterol. There are apparently a small subset of people (like 5% or so) who are particularly sensitive to dietary cholesterol though. That was why nutrition science in the 80s/90s should be such a cautionary tale. So much of it was bad science, or more charitably there were "reasonable" hypotheses that were presented as government-sponsored "facts" that turned out to be false when they were actually tested.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  > or more charitably there were "reasonable" hypotheses that were presented as government-sponsored "facts" that turned out to be false when they were actually tested. The Covid debactle could be a more recent experience. Guesses was reported as facts. Then the flipfloping made peoples heads hurt and the consensus on what to do ended in a mess and a heated political point.

Eggs had a rough go of it in the 90s. There were studies where it seemed like even looking at an egg would cause your cholesterol to sky rocket and kill you.

by bena 2y ago

Eggs had a rough go of it in the 90s. There were studies where it seemed like even looking at an egg would cause your cholesterol to sky rocket and kill you.

colechristensen 2y ago

The fed a bunch of cholesterol to rabbits who then got heart disease. But it turns out you’re not a rabbit and dietary cholesterol has nowhere near the same effect on humans.

Filligree 2y ago
And also rabbits do not normally eat eggs, in fact aren’t even carnivores.
- fifticon 2y ago
  how do you explain easter egg bunnies then??
jandrese 2y ago
Who could have ever guessed that a herbivore would be poorly adapted to high amounts of cholesterol in their diet?

lynx97 2y ago

One item on the rather long list of dietary advice/findings that have turned out to be wrong or overstated. Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". A local cabarettist had a 10 minute piece about this already 15 years ago. It seems, most dietary advice holds roughly 10 years, until someone else publishes another "study" and the press picks up on it to "entertain" the masses. Remember spinace and its supposed iron content? Or the milk industry doing an ad compaign (for decades!) to promote milk for school kids? The former was a misplaced comma, IIRC. And the latter was a blatant attempt to sell more product.

JohnMakin 2y ago
> Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". Seems like a bit of confirmation bias here - tons of things that people were told would kill them, did in fact end up killing them. Science is wrong sometimes, of course, and science journalism even more often.
- lynx97 2y ago
  Well, eggs just triggered me. I am from the "I will stop eating eggs when there are no chickens anymore" team... And sure, you're definitely right. Learning about and eliminating aspestos, for instance, was probably one of the bigger well known positive counter-example from the previous century. However, I can't think of many great counter-examples when it comes to dietary advice and the science journalism (thanks for the word) attached to it. Maybe you can poke a hole in my confimraton bias?
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Drinking too much soda with sugar? Now the acidity in artificially sweetened soda makes peoples' teeth bad. My dentist mother is furious about that people believe that it is only the sugar in the soda that is bad for the teeth.
soperj 2y ago
the misplaced comma was also a myth. https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popeye_March_2010.pdf https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popey...
bigstrat2003 2y ago
> Looking back at what we've been told would kill us, the older you get, the less you actually trust in the latest "findings". This is where I am for sure. I don't trust any trends as to what people figure will kill you any more, because they're almost always wrong in the end. In 20 years if it turns out to not be recanted, then I'll pay attention I guess.

toast0 2y ago

Thankfully, they were let out of prison. https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34447709/bad-rap/california-egg-commission https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34447709/bad... (circa 1991??)

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

> There were studies where it seemed like even looking at an egg would cause your cholesterol to sky rocket and kill you. Except there really weren't studies, and this is why the nutrition "science" was so bad back then. A sibling comment mentioned a study in rabbits and points out the obvious problems with making conclusions based on a herbivore, but the general belief was that since high blood cholesterol was linked with heart disease, eating a lot of cholesterol is bad for you. When they actually did to the studies, they found that the vast majority of people do not get high blood cholesterol from (reasonable amounts of) dietary cholesterol. There are apparently a small subset of people (like 5% or so) who are particularly sensitive to dietary cholesterol though. That was why nutrition science in the 80s/90s should be such a cautionary tale. So much of it was bad science, or more charitably there were "reasonable" hypotheses that were presented as government-sponsored "facts" that turned out to be false when they were actually tested.

rightbyte 2y ago
> or more charitably there were "reasonable" hypotheses that were presented as government-sponsored "facts" that turned out to be false when they were actually tested. The Covid debactle could be a more recent experience. Guesses was reported as facts. Then the flipfloping made peoples heads hurt and the consensus on what to do ended in a mess and a heated political point.