New Research Suggests That Eating One Egg a Day Won’t Increase Risk of Heart Disease

How often have you heard that eating eggs will cause your cholesterol to rise and therefore, increase your chances of developing heart disease? Well, what if we told you that’s not necessarily true. New research suggests that eating a certain amount of eggs per week isn’t linked to an increased risk of heart disease, at all.

The report, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, analyzed the findings of three multinational studies, all of which combined followed a total of 177,000 people of different income levels in 50 countries. The key takeaway from all three of these studies, in a way, debunks what many believe to be true about the relationship between eggs and heart disease. The commonality of the results from all three studies was that moderate egg intake (or eating one egg a day) didn’t increase participants’ risk of developing cardiovascular disease. This even included individuals who had a history of heart disease, or other chronic conditions such as diabetes.

“Also, no association was found between egg intake and blood cholesterol, its components or other risk factors,” said Mahshid Dehghan, Ph.D., an investigator at the Population Health Research Institute. “These results are robust and widely applicable to both healthy individuals and those with vascular disease.”

In other words, if you wanted to eat seven eggs each week, it wouldn’t affect your risk of developing heart disease any more than someone who doesn’t eat eggs at all. So, why then do some studies suggest it’s best to limit consumption to just three eggs a week? Salim Yusuf, the principal investigator of the study and director of PHRI, said that the pools of people examined in those former studies were likely insufficient in both size and diversity.

“This is because most of these studies were relatively small or moderate in size and did not include individuals from a large number of countries,” he said.

Essentially, you shouldn’t be concerned about eating two eggs for breakfast on three or maybe even four days of the week.