Jumping to Conclusions

Eggs, butter, and jumping to conclusions

You might be wondering what do these have to do with each other?

Everything.

In the wonderful world of only reading the headlines, don’t bother with the facts, jumping to conclusions is a real danger.

Let me explain.

Last weekend was the long weekend in Canada and I went to meet some family and friends. The man had to work, so he stayed home. A couple of days after I got home I was getting dressed, I grabbed some underwear from my drawer and was putting them on when I realized that they were not mine.

But, let’s not jump to conclusions.

Eggs, butter and some other conclusions

You may have seen these headlines recently.

On CNN An egg a day might reduce heart disease, study says.

At Time Eating an Egg a Day May Lower Heart Disease Risk, Study Says 

If you like eggs you might read the headlines and think, “okay I guess I can still eat eggs.”

Or instead of reading the articles, which don’t really establish much about the health benefits of eggs you could read the study and the story is a little different.

This is a large study, 400,000 people over nine years in China. The study relied on questionnaires and self-reporting, not the most accurate method for diet analysis. We know that people aren’t very good at remembering what they eat or how much.

Regardless of the accuracy of the questionnaires, the study stated that those who ate one egg a day had an 11% lower risk of heart disease.

Compared to what?

Professor Caroline Richard at the University of Alberta says of this study,

“the new study is simply observational and so cannot show a direct cause and effect between eating eggs and risk of heart disease.”

A few other things you might want to know about the study before you start eating eggs.

The people who ate the fewest eggs also had the lowest education level, the highest blood pressure, were more likely to be smokers and had the lowest income.

Maybe the study should have concluded that having an education, not smoking, lowering your blood pressure and a higher income was associated with heart health – this is true, we know this.

Eating an egg could be healthier than some of the alternatives. However, if you want a heart-healthy breakfast,  eat oatmeal. 

Next time you see a headline like, “eggs are heart healthy”, or “butter is back”  don’t jump to conclusions. Read the fine print.

About that other thing.

I had to call my sister and tell her that I accidentally took a pair of her underwear home with me after our weekend. If I had just jumped to conclusions this might have turned out badly.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla