• heart disease

To the Editor

Thank you for your comments.

Our recently published research found that a moderate level of egg consumption was associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) among the non-diabetic Chinese population, after adjusting for a series of established and potential confounders, including socioeconomic factors (such as education level and household income), lifestyle behaviours, other dietary factors and medical history as detailed as possible.1 Although we only adjusted for dietary patterns with three groups,2 further adjustment for the other 11 food groups (including fresh vegetable, fresh fruit and dairy product consumption) in the sensitivity analyses showed the robustness of the results.

Such beneficial effects of egg consumption may be due to the substitution of red meat, which is one of the alternative sources of dietary protein. Yet, we observed that the frequencies of meat and …