 If you remember, I lampooned the egg industry PR campaign trying to promote eggs as a source of eyesight-saving nutrients such as lutein, by noting that the amount in a single spoonful of spinach had as much as 9 eggs. The reason you only hear that egg industry claim on websites and TV shows and never in an ad or on an egg carton is because there are laws against false and misleading advertisement that don't allow the industry to say eggs contain lutein because there's such an insignificant amount. This is an email retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act from the head of USDA's Poultry Research and Promotion Programs reminding the egg industry that they can't mention lutein in an egg ad. I can't say it helps people with macular degeneration. I can't even talk about how good lutein is, since eggs have such a wee amount and given eggs fat and cholesterol content. This is a non-starter for anything but PR. So for pubic relations, you can lie through your teeth, but there's laws covering truthfulness in ads. Also, can't say eggs are a source of omega-3s or a source of iron or folate. Can't even honestly call eggs a rich source of protein. The USDA Ag Culture Marketing Service suggested the egg industry instead boast about the choline content in eggs. One of the only two nutrients eggs are actually rich in, besides cholesterol. So the egg industry switched gears. A priority objective of the American Egg Board became to make choline out to be an urgent problem in eggs, the solution. Maybe they could partner with a physician's group and write an advertorial. They developed a number of advertorials for nutrition journals. An advertorial is an advertisement parading as an objective editorial. They sent letters out to doctors, warning about inadequate intake of choline, having tremendous public health implications. So forget about the cholesterol, the elephant in the room, as the industry calls it, and focus on this conjured epidemic of choline deficiency. It turns out most people get about twice what they need, and in fact too much choline may be the real problem. For one thing, too much choline can give your breath, urine, wet saliva, and vaginal secretions an odor resembling rotten dead fish. Millions of Americans have a genetic defect that causes a fishy body odor and might benefit from a low choline diet, since choline is converted and are gotten into a fishy compound trimethylamine. In fact, individuals oozing trimethylamine often become vegans, as reducing the ingestion of dietary animal products rich in lipids decreases trimethylamine production and the associated noxious odor. The other 99% of us, though, can turn the fishy choline compound into trimethylamine oxide, which is 100 times less stinky. We used to think the extra choline was okay for the 99%, but not anymore. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found dietary choline, found predominantly in eggs, a milk, liver, red meat, poultry, and fish. After it is converted in our gut to trimethylamine, oxidizing our liver to form trimethylamine oxide, may contribute to plaque buildup in people's arteries and set us up for heart disease, stroke, death, and if that's not bad enough, open heart surgery. The good news is that this may mean a new approach to prevent or treat heart disease, the most obvious of which would be to limit dietary choline intake. But if that means decreasing egg meat and dairy consumption, then the new approach sounds an awful lot like the old approach. Choline may be one of the reasons people following the Atkins Diet or increased risk of heart disease, whereas a plant-based diet like Ornish can instead reverse our number one killer. This new research adds choline to the list of dietary culprits with the potential to increase the risk of heart disease, making eggs a double whammy, the most concentrated common source of both choline and cholesterol.