General Medicine
January 31, 2019
Short Answer: One egg per day is fine, eating more is OK as long as you do it in moderation as part of a balanced diet.
As of 2019, the data shows that eggs are generally pretty healthy and they're surprisingly good for your heart and brain.
While there are studies on both sides of the matter, the most recent data shows no significant harmful effects to eating eggs everyday, and actually suggests some health benefits.
The primary fear with eating more eggs has typically been the fear of getting heart disease. Traditionally, doctors have believed that eating too many eggs raises your cholesterol. New research has shown that this may not be the case.
Your cholesterol is mostly created by your own body. The most important factor in maintaining a healthy level of blood cholesterol remains eating a healthy diet and losing weight.
To that end, eating eggs isn’t necessarily bad for you. In fact, it is probably better for you been eating a lot of refined carbs such as white bread, white rice.
The data below was created in a study of nearly half 1 million people. Scientists split these patients into groups based on how often they ate eggs. They found at the end of the study that patients who ate eggs seven days a week had a much lower risk of heart disease compared to patients who never ate eggs.
Additionally, in a study of patients with diabetes, researchers found that eating 12 eggs per week made no difference in a patient’s health status or weight compared to eating less than two eggs per week.
Diabetic patients were randomly assigned to either eat a lot of eggs or few eggs. At the end of the study, as shown in the data below, there were no appreciable changes in the patient’s weight, cholesterol, or their blood sugar.
Generally, the most important question is not what to eat but how much to eat. The answer to that of course is the less the better.
In choosing between what to eat, eggs are definitely better than carbs. In the study shown below, patients were assigned to eat either a high carb diet, a medium carb diet, or a low carb diet.
Just by switching to a low-carb diet, researchers estimated that patients increased their daily metabolism by 190 cal per day compared to patients on the high carb diet.
As far as the research can tell us, one or two eggs per day should be totally fine. In fact, it’s probably good for you. Any more than that, we don’t really know.
But, so far we don’t have reason to believe that eggs are necessarily harmful to you unless you eat so many eggs that you start to gain weight. The key is eating eggs as part of a balanced diet so you get all your vitamins and minerals.
