Is eating eggs good or bad for my cholesterol?

by Dr Keith Souter

Last week my wife and I walked through muddy fields and waterlogged footpaths on the first leg of the Shakespeare Way from Stratfordupon-Avon to Oxford. We stayed at country pubs and B&Bs, which meant that full English breakfasts were always on offer. Potentially, that would be a lot of eggs.

At one time the standard advice was to restrict one’s egg intake to four a week or even avoid them. The reasoning was that since cholesterol in the blood is a risk factor, one should avoid cholesterol in the diet, and egg yolks are rich in cholesterol.

Since then research has shown that most of the cholesterol in the body is made inside the body by the liver. This happens because the liver is stimulated to produce cholesterol by the presence of saturated and trans fats in the diet. The cholesterol in the diet hardly contributes to this at all.

I reviewed the research. Harvard University followed up hundreds of thousands of people over several decades. They have not found any higher rate of heart attacks or strokes in people who eat up to one egg a day.

Other research from China backs this up. A large study actually found that those who ate one egg a day had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those who ate eggs less frequently. They conducted a study aimed to find out why this could be the case. They identified 14 metabolites that are linked to heart disease. They found that people who ate the least eggs had lower levels of beneficial or protective metabolites and higher levels of harmful ones, compared to those who ate eggs regularly.

The very latest study followed up 140 people over a four-month period. The average age of participants was 66 years and all were at high risk of heart attacks. They found that cholesterol levels were similar among people who ate fortified eggs most days of the week compared with those who didn’t eat eggs at all. So it is not the eggs that increase blood cholesterol, but the saturated fat in butter, cheese, bacon and sausages that may accompany them.