24 February 2009
Good news for egg lovers was welcomed by healthy eating experts at Epsom and St Helier hospitals last week.
Fears that eating more than three eggs per week is bad for your health and raises cholesterol levels have been allayed, after a new paper published showed that it can be safe to eat two eggs a day.
Jill Thorpe, a specialist dietician based at St Helier Hospital, said: "For many years people have been limiting the amount of eggs they eat each week because results from early studies were interpreted incorrectly.
"But now eggs can be recommended as part of a healthy, balanced diet, and that's great news for a lot of people. Remember though, it's good to eat as varied a diet as possible.
“Eggs are a relatively inexpensive source of nutrition for everyone and emerging evidence suggests their high protein content could even help with weight loss.
"Many people think that by avoiding foods like eggs, they can cut out dietary cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. But this ignores the most important dietary risk factor - cutting down on saturated fat is much more critical.
“People should try to cook their eggs in a way that does not add a lot of extra fat. Boiling, poaching, and scrambling are healthier than frying eggs."
The paper, published last week in the British Nutrition Foundation's Nutrition Bulletin, reveals that the misconceptions around eggs and cholesterol largely stem from incorrect conclusions drawn from early research. Later studies have been able to separate the cholesterol-raising effects of dietary cholesterol from saturated fat, which often exist together in the same foods. Eggs are not high in saturated fat.
While elevated blood cholesterol levels increase the risk of heart disease, only around a third of the cholesterol in the body comes from the diet. Other factors such as smoking, being overweight and physical activity can influence blood fat and cholesterol levels and heart disease risk. The paper emphasises that it is saturated fat, not the cholesterol found in foods like eggs, that is the main dietary ‘culprit' in raising blood cholesterol levels.
