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I read yesterday that a single egg contains 70% of my daily cholesterol. I will frequently cook myself an omlette for lunch with 2-3 eggs. Is this unhealthy if I do it more than once a week?

fredley
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    +1! Folklore in my country says that you shouldn't eat more than 3 eggs a week, but I never took the time to research the theory behind that. – AndrejaKo Mar 23 '11 at 11:37
  • strange, here it says no more than 3 a day :) – jwenting May 18 '11 at 11:53
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    Cholesterol in food is not problem as to my understanding body just produces less cholesterol to take account the cholesterol in food. – Illotus Jan 08 '12 at 11:49
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    Have you a reference to back that up, @Illotus? – Oddthinking Feb 06 '12 at 01:42
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    More than 3 per minute is said to be of non benefit, in the long run. – user unknown Feb 06 '12 at 03:34
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    I think we can agree that the number 3 is key here. – Zano Feb 06 '12 at 12:06
  • @Oddthinking "The response of cholesterogenesis to different amounts of dietary cholesterol was related to the rate of synthesis under depressed conditions of the low-cholesterol diet. These findings indicate modest downregulation of synthesis in response to dietary cholesterol in humans, independent of plasma cholesterol levels." http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/16/10/1222.short – Illotus Feb 06 '12 at 14:27
  • @Illotus, thanks for the link! Maybe I'm nerdy, but that's a pretty cool little experiment! It certainly shows the body produces less cholesterol if you eat more of it. It doesn't quite prove that dietary cholesterol is not a problem at all. – Oddthinking Feb 06 '12 at 14:46

1 Answers1

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The BBC quotes Professor Bruce Griffin as saying:

"The ingrained misconception linking egg consumption to high blood cholesterol and heart disease must be corrected. The amount of saturated fat in our diet exerts an effect on blood cholesterol that is several times greater than the relatively small amounts of dietary cholesterol. The UK public do not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat - indeed they can be encouraged to include them in a healthy diet as they are one of nature's most nutritionally dense foods."

The British Heart Foundation make the point that the eggs are fine, but the other things you add during cooking, such as butter fat etc are why eating a lot of eggs would be bad.

Oddthinking
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Tom Gullen
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    I substantially edited this answer to bring it in line with the current expected standards of Skeptics.SE (although quoting a peer-reviewed paper would make it better still.) I also deleted a lot of banter in the comments which is no longer relevant. – Oddthinking Feb 06 '12 at 01:50
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    And whether butter fat is harmful is also a highly contested claim. – Flimzy Aug 08 '12 at 02:00
  • OK, what about the doctors that keep on saying it's unhealthy to eat eggs everyday? – supertonsky Aug 26 '14 at 12:06