A common question I get is are eggs bad for me?! We’ve all heard about the dangers of eating too much cholesterol, and that egg yolks are a particularly high source of this dangerous compound. Not only that, but because the fat of eggs are in the yolk, many people think that in order to lose weight and cut calories, they should be eating egg whites instead.

It’s a HUGE misconception that the dietary cholesterol in eggs raises blood cholesterol. It’s been proven over the last few years that dietary cholesterol (aka the cholesterol you eat) does NOT correlate to blood cholesterol. We think of cholesterol as a bad thing, but your body needs a certain amount of it to function.

Cholesterol is an important part of cell membranes, which are the outside boarder of the cell that keeps the things that are supposed to be inside the cell, in the cell, and the things that are supposed to be outside the cell, out of the cell. Cholesterol is also used in the process of making hormones and making Vitamin D (most of the D in your body is actually made by your own cells!).

Because cholesterol has such important functions, your body can make it itself and has safety mechanisms to make sure it doesn’t get too low. When you stop eating cholesterol, your body just makes more of it. When you eat more cholesterol, your body makes less of it.

This is why dietary cholesterol doesn’t impact your blood cholesterol, your body will simply adjust the amount of cholesterol that’s made internally to match what you need.

If this is true, then why did we think dietary cholesterol raised blood cholesterol for so long?

Like many aspects of nutrition, nutrient effects can be EXTREMELY hard to isolate. This is because we don’t eat just 1 nutrient at a time, we eat foods that have a variety of different nutrients and compounds, and we eat a variety of different foods.

This makes it easy to establish correlation (ex: eating more broccoli is related to lower body weight), but very hard to establish causation (ex: eating more broccoli causes lower body weight), because it’s hard to separate the exact nutrient causing the outcome.

For a long time, researchers thought that dietary cholesterol caused higher blood cholesterol, because it was an easy conclusion to make. They weren’t totally wrong, but they were too quick to jump from correlation to causation. Over the years, they realized that cholesterol wasn’t actually the cause, but that the cause of increased blood cholesterol was actually saturated fat intake, which is often found in foods that also have cholesterol. A pretty easy mistake to make!

After figuring this out, the research has now consistently proved that eating foods with cholesterol, like eggs, will not raise your blood cholesterol, but it’s actually the saturated fats, found in foods like butter, cheese, and red meat, that you have to be careful of.

Whole eggs are an amazing source of protein, and most of the other nutrients like Vitamin D, iron, and zinc are in the yolk, don’t miss out on those important nutrients! Including the yolk will also add fat to your meal, which will slow down digestion and keep you full longer. ⁣
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Eggs have always been a breakfast staple for me and they’re a great way to start your day with protein & important vitamins and minerals!