By: Thomas Pickering, MD, DPhil, FRCP, Director of Integrative and Behavioral Cardiology Program
of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.

A frequently given piece of advice for the prevention of heart disease is to avoid eating eggs, on the grounds that egg yolks are rich in cholesterol. However, it is known that eating saturated fat raises the blood cholesterol more than eating cholesterol itself. The consequences of eating eggs have been looked at in two large studies in which people’s diet was evaluated, and then they were followed to see who developed heart disease. One study was the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (37,000 men followed for eight years), and the other, the Nurses Health Study (80,000 women followed for 14 years).

Both studies showed the same thing: there was no evidence that eating eggs as often as once a day carried any increased risk of getting either a heart attack or a stroke, except in people with diabetes. Both studies found that higher egg consumption did increase the risk of heart disease in men and women with diabetes.

Doctor’s comments

The main reason why eggs are thought to be bad for the heart is that each egg contains about 200 milligrams of cholesterol. An egg also contains 6 grams of protein and 5 of fat. While some studies have found that feeding people eggs raises LDL cholesterol a little, there may also be a reduction of triglycerides and an increase of HDL cholesterol, both of which effects would be beneficial. Eggs also contain some vitamins. While these results do not indicate that eating more eggs should be recommended, they do suggest that eggs are not the villains people once thought them to be.

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