Eggs - good or bad for you?

I recently came across a study showing that eating 1 or 2 eggs a week modestly reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, postulated to be due to the high choline content of egg yolks. (Choline goes to form a protein that carries signals between nerves.)

My immediate reaction was to think “yes, but won’t that increase your heart risk?” so I decided to dig further.

Eggs are nutrient rich, a good source of protein, lutein (important for eye health), choline and other nutrients and low in calories. (Leafy greens are another good source of lutein.) Eggs are also rich in cholesterol. One average egg yolk contains 186 mg of cholesterol, and standard diet advice is to limit our cholesterol to 300 mg/day.

Things are not so simple, however. While lowering blood cholesterol has been proven to reduce heart attack risk, blood cholesterol is much more sensitive to saturated fat in the diet than to dietary cholesterol. Most of our circulating cholesterol is manufactured in the liver, and if we eat more cholesterol, the liver makes less.

Most of us, some 70%, have no change in blood cholesterol after eating eggs. The other 30% do show an increase in cholesterol, but both HDL (good) and LDL (bad) rise.

Multiple epidemiologic studies have shown no increased heart attack risk associated with egg consumption, and a small trial using controlled diets found that increasing saturated fat in the diet raised LDL (bad) cholesterol, but eating two eggs a day did not.

So, if there is any heart risk from eating eggs, it seems to be the bacon, sausage and butter, all rich in saturated fats, that often accompany the eggs, that are the culprit.

Replacing a high carbohydrate cereal or a muffin with a couple of poached eggs will generally improve your heart health.

If you have heart disease or diabetes, get your doctor’s opinion. Otherwise, enjoy your eggs – just lay off the bacon!


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