I am wondering whether you have researched these. The pediatrician told us not to give our son more than 1 egg per day, and mayo clinic agrees with this. The problem is the yolk, one yolk has the equivalent of max cholesterol level that one can take per day. The risk is serious heart diseases from clogged arteries later in life. I also looked into soy lecithin as a source of choline, and what worries me is that soy (and thus soy lecithin) is laden with female hormones. There are some research articles indicating that the hormones in soy can lead to early puberty in females, and later puberty in males, along with the potential health consequences.
Please let me know your thoughts and/or finding. Also if there are any good sources of choline that is not from egg yolk or soy lecithin, I'll be interested to learn about it. Thanks!
Juliana
Here is my response:
Hi Juliana,
I have done some research on those topics. First of all - the research on high choline levels suggests that it only helps if it is delivered during pregnancy, and during the first 2 to 3 years of life. So if your son is older than that - the research suggests that there won't be any impact on memory.
With regard to phyto-estrogens in Lecithin - the studies I've seen have indicated that there are no measurable phyto-estrogens in Lecithin - here are some studies that I've looked at:
There was another I looked at also - but I can't find it quickly. Generally I search on http://pubmed.org for all the latest research.
But I just found this - which is interesting - which suggests we might want to be careful with any children's food:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21801783
So - perhaps many children's foods have soy estrogens.
With regard to cholesterol levels - I believe that any guidelines for children are only relevant to children over the age of 2 years, so I haven't really put much emphasis on them. Here is an example of this:
http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/guide/high-cholesterol-children
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/ncr431.pdf
We've been using only eggs yolks and soy-lecithin for our children and it seems fine. Children doing extremely well so far. Of course - that doesn't mean that there might not be problems, and there haven't been any long term tests - so its reasonable to be cautious.
We use this Soy Lecithin product:
http://www.iherb.com/Now-Foods-Lecithin-Granules-1-lb-454-g/303?at=0
and mix it into oatmeal, etc.
Hope that is helpful,
admin (at) cholinebaby.com
