Eggs: Are they good or bad for my cholesterol?

Are chicken eggs good or bad for my cholesterol?

Answers from Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D.
Chicken eggs are high in cholesterol, but the effect of egg consumption on blood cholesterol is minimal when compared with the effect of trans fats and saturated fats.

The risk of heart disease may be more closely tied to the foods that accompany the eggs in a traditional American breakfast — such as the sodium in the bacon, sausages and ham, and the saturated fat or oils with trans fats used to fry the eggs and the hash browns.

Most healthy people can eat up to seven eggs a week with no increase in their risk of heart disease. Some studies have shown that this level of egg consumption may actually prevent some types of strokes.

But the story is different for people who have diabetes. In this ever-growing population, eating seven eggs a week significantly increases the risk of heart disease.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one large egg has about 186 mg milligrams (mg) of cholesterol — all of which is found in the yolk.

When deciding whether to include eggs in your diet, consider the recommended daily limits on cholesterol in your food:

--If you are healthy, consume no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day.

--If you have diabetes, high cholesterol or heart disease, limit the daily cholesterol intake to no more than 200 mg a day.

If you like eggs but don't want the extra cholesterol, use only the egg whites. Egg whites contain no cholesterol. You may also use cholesterol-free egg substitutes, which are made with egg whites.


Another Study Shows the data like this:
It's true that when you compare egg yolks to other foods they are relatively high in cholesterol, as the average egg contains anywhere between 190 and 215 milligrams. Cholesterol is something that many people should be concerned about, but not so much in the case of eggs. Studies have shown that regularly eating eggs can actually lower your low density lipids (that's "bad" cholesterol to us lay people) and raises high density lipids. Limiting dietary cholesterol intake is important but the real danger comes from saturated fats and trans fats. These two are greater factors in increased cholesterol than any typical intake of egg yolks.


According to Dr. Mercola
Egg white omelets and other yolk-free recipes have become synonymous with “healthy” to many. But if you toss out your egg yolks, you’re also tossing out some of the most nutritious parts of the egg.

For instance, egg yolks (but not whites) contain vitamins A, D, E and K along with omega-3 fats. Compared to the whites, egg yolks also contain more beneficial folate and vitamin B12. The yolks also contain far more of the nutrient choline than the whites, and all of the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin.

Egg yolks have been unfairly vilified for decades because they contain cholesterol and saturated fat. But contrary to the prevailing nutritional dogma that such dietary components need to be avoided, the cholesterol and saturated fat in animal foods like egg yolks are quite beneficial for your health.

#Eating Cholesterol-Rich Foods Doesn’t Lead to High Cholesterol
One egg yolk contains about 210 milligrams (mg) of cholesterol, which is why public health agencies have long suggested Americans limit their intake.

This is a highly flawed recommendation on multiple levels; for starters, “high” cholesterol does not cause heart disease, and beyond that, eating cholesterol-rich food doesn’t cause your cholesterol levels to increase.

Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen estimates that only 20 percent of your blood cholesterol levels come from your diet. The rest of the cholesterol in your body is produced by your liver, which it makes because your body needscholesterol.

One survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with so-called "bad" dietary habits, such as consumption of red meat, animal fats, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage, and cheese.2

Consumption of more than six eggs per week also does not increase your risk of stroke and ischemic stroke, for instance.3

#Egg Yolks Have Little to No Impact on Cholesterol Levels for Most People
Further, eating two eggs a day does not adversely affect endothelial function (an aggregate measure of cardiac risk) in healthy adults, supporting the view that dietary cholesterol may be far less detrimental to cardiovascular health than previously thought.4

According to Chris Masterjohn, who received his Ph.D. in nutritional sciences from the University of Connecticut:5

"Since we cannot possibly eat enough cholesterol to use for our bodies' daily functions, our bodies make their own. When we eat more foods rich in this compound, our bodies make less.

If we deprive ourselves of foods high in cholesterol — such as eggs, butter, and liver — our body revs up its cholesterol synthesis. The end result is that, for most of us, eating foods high in cholesterol has very little impact on our blood cholesterol levels.

In seventy percent of the population, foods rich in cholesterol such as eggs cause only a subtle increase in cholesterol levels or none at all. In the other thirty percent, these foods do cause a rise in blood cholesterol levels.

Despite this, research has never established any clear relationship between the consumption of dietary cholesterol and the risk for heart disease … Raising cholesterol levels is not necessarily a bad thing either."