The Egg / Cholesterol Debate Finally Put To Rest

Information about eggs and health has been yoyoing back and forward for the last few decades.

Eggs are either the devil or your saving grace depending on who’s preaching.

Now a new study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, may finally put an end to this argument.

This is because they give you the only reasonable answer to whether eggs are good for your heart:

“It depends!”

For this piece, researchers from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Northwestern University looked back over large studies that recorded the diets, lifestyles, and cardiovascular diseases of 29,615 people. These people had an average age of 51.6 and they were followed for an average of 17.5 Years.

When the researchers separated out daily cholesterol consumption, daily egg consumption, cardiovascular events, and deaths from the rest of the data, they found some interesting points:

The first 300 mg (milligrams) of cholesterol consumed per day has no measurable harmful effects on health.

Beyond the first 300 mg of daily cholesterol, every additional 300 mg increases our risk of a cardiovascular event such as stroke or heart attack by 17% and our chance of death by 18%.

Beyond the first 300 mg of daily cholesterol, each half an egg increases our risk of a cardiovascular event by 6% and our risk of death by 8%.

To unpick all that, it doesn’t mean you have to avoid eggs. In fact, it shows that eggs are fine in moderation—but how much is that exactly?

One egg, or one egg yolk to be more precise, contains 200 mg of cholesterol, which is about the same amount as you’ll find in a large steak.

This means that if you eat a large steak and an egg every day, together with the milk in your tea or coffee, you will be over the 300 mg safe limit.

But if you eat three eggs and three large steaks per week, and spread them out, your cholesterol intake will be below it.

Past research has actually shown that daily cholesterol intake doesn’t raise our cholesterol to harmful levels, which is why the American and British governments don’t recommend a daily cholesterol limit.

The main reason why eggs (and meats for that matter) become unhealthy is when they’re fried or cooked at high heat.

When you heat cholesterol, its chemical composition changes in a process called oxidation. It is this oxidized cholesterol that clogs your arteries.

So, you don’t need to stop eggs altogether. They’re healthy in moderation. Just don’t overdo it.

Now, if your cholesterol is too high, and your arteries have begun to clog, then the most important thing to do is to avoid this oxidized cholesterol. Here I explain in more detail what oxidized cholesterol is and how to avoid it…

And if your blood pressure is too high, discover 3 easy exercises to drop it below 120/80—starting today…