The egg is a standard breakfast meal, but many might be wondering whether eggs are healthy for the heart or not. Each egg has 78 calories, and they are an efficient, rich source of protein and vitamins. Apart from being a very nutritious breakfast choice, people believe that the egg yolk which is rich in cholesterol, especially LDL (bad) cholesterol, only increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases. However, a December 2021 report in Harvard Health Publishing revealed that consuming eggs doesn’t really impact an individual’s cholesterol levels.
Most of the cholesterol in our body is made by the liver and it doesn’t come from the cholesterol we eat. According to the report, the liver is primarily stimulated to make cholesterol by saturated fat and trans fat in our diet, and not dietary cholesterol. So the cholesterol level in an egg has no role to play when it comes to its impact on heart health. And as far as the saturated fat is concerned, a large egg contains little about 1.5 grams of it.
The report mentioned that the evidence of cholesterol in one egg a day is safe for most people comes from a number of studies, of which many were conducted at the Harvard Medical School itself. “It is those studies that do not find higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, or other cardiovascular diseases in people who eat up to one egg per day,” the report read.
Meanwhile, the American Heart Association (AHA), in 2020, published an advisory about dietary cholesterol.
The advisory said egg intake was not significantly associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease in the studies that the AHA examined. However, the association recommended people to be critical about the intake of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat in their diets.
