7 eggs p/week as part of a healthy diet

May 6, 2022

Eggs and heart health have been at logger heads for a while. When it comes to eggs, there's more dietary recommendations than you can poke a finger at, and it is highly dependent on who it is you ask. According to diet culture, you can have:

- 4 whole eggs, but if it has 2 yolks then it's only 2 eggs

- but if it's just whites no yolks, then you can have 10

- if it's boiled you can have 15

- but since fried, sunny-side-up is from the devil, you can only have 1 per fortnight.

Diet rules are both way too convoluted, depressing, and downright fear-mongering, especially if you like eggs.

For the record, it's one thing to understand nutrients needed for health, it's another thing to understand how the nutrients are located in the food, and how the human body extracts the nutrients out during eating and digestion. Hence dietary recommendations need to be in context of health status, and dose intake.

For a person with cholesterol related issues, it's really important to receive dietary advice in the context of your health status from a PROPER health care provider (not a social media influencer). But for those who have a clean bill of health, and like eggs, here's some wonderful news on how many eggs we can have per week.

Historically eggs have been in the human diet for a VERY LONG TIME. The ancient Egyptians are credited with keeping chickens, & cooking eggs. There is even a picture of a pelican carrying a basket of eggs in the tomb of Pharaoh Horemheb. But it wasn't until the Roman empire that Anthimus, the father of ancient dietetics, started explaining the role of eggs in a healthy diet (Alcock, J.P. 2006, Food in the Ancient World). According to Anthimus, you can eat as many eggs as you like although hard boiled eggs are more "substantial" than raw. He also suggested the correct way to prepare eggs by placing them in cold water and gently simmering over a low flame til hard boiled...

While Anthimus' technique conflicts Chef J.Kenji Lopez-Alt's method for the perfect boiled egg, Anthimus' advice that you can eat as many eggs as you like is not quite applicable in today's modern world where eggs are not the main protein source, & are usually paired with other foods.

According to Autumn Swiers in her article in Tasting Table this week, we can have 7 eggs per week as part of a healthy diet. Now of course this is for those who are "healthy" with no cholesterol-related health issues.

"But I thought eggs have cholesterol?", I hear you ask.

It does (located in the yolk). But it is also a great source of protein, vitamin A, D, B12 & choline (important for neurological functions).

So yes, like most things in this life eggs come with a combo of good & not-so-great.

The issue with eggs is not so much the cholesterol in the eggs, but the fact that eggs are usually paired with high fat-low fibre foods like bacon & sausages.

Check out the article for more egg tips.