A small egg but a huge controversy. There used to be a saying: Eating an egg a day can save you from going to the doctor. It can be seen that eggs are good for health.

However, experts have debated for many years whether eggs are good or bad for people’s health.

According to the latest medical research published in the “Journal of the American Medical Association”, whether eggs are good for the body depends on how many you eat a week?

Studies have found that eating two eggs a day can lead to cardiovascular damage and premature death.

This is because egg yolks contain a lot of cholesterol. For example, a large egg contains about 185 mg of cholesterol, according to the USDA. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation for cholesterol is 300 mg per day.

In other words, if you eat one egg a day, you have already used more than half of the recommended amount of cholesterol, and if you eat two eggs, it is absolutely excessive.

risk ratio

The study analyzed data from 6 related trials involving more than 30,000 people over a period of 17 years.

The researchers concluded that consuming more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day was associated with a 17 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease and an 18 percent increase in premature death.

If you eat 3 to 4 eggs a week, you can increase the rate of cardiovascular disease and premature death by 6% and 8% respectively.

However, eating 2 eggs a day increased the risk of cardiovascular disease by 27%, and the premature death rate increased by 34%.

They were not related to conditions such as age, fitness, smoking or pre-existing high blood pressure, according to the study.

Allen, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study, said: “Our study shows that if two people eat the exact same diet, but the only difference is in the eggs. The person who eats more eggs dies of a heart attack. more likely to get sick.”

contradicts previous studies

The new study contradicts previous research that did not link egg consumption with an increased risk of heart disease.

In this regard, Allen said that the time span of previous research was relatively short, and the sample data used also lacked diversity.

But even then, the researchers acknowledge that their analysis could be flawed.

Because the survey on the number of eggs consumed was conducted in the form of a questionnaire. Therefore, the respondents had to recall how many eggs they had consumed months or even years earlier.

Some experts pointed out that this result can only be used as a reference. While there may be an association between the number of eggs eaten and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and early death, it does not prove cause and effect.

Saunders, an expert in nutrition at King’s College London, said the strength of the study was that the data it used were more representative of the racial diversity of the US population.

But it is limited in that it relies on a single measure of dietary intake.

Recommended amount

So how many eggs should we eat?

Allen recommends no more than 3 per week. She also suggested that people who like to eat eggs might as well eat more egg whites.

Allen said that she is not recommending that people avoid eggs completely, but in moderation.

According to Saunders’s observations, the average daily cholesterol intake of Americans from the diet is about 600 mg, which is much higher than the average amount of 225 mg for the British.

As can be seen from the above table, the number of eggs consumed per capita in the United States is 252, ranking seventh. But heart disease mortality accounts for nearly 20% of the total mortality.

In comparison, the Japanese eat more eggs than Americans, with an average of 329 eggs per person per year. But its heart disease mortality rate is only 11%.