Cholesterol Vs. Eggs

Doctors, who generally have no formal training in nutrition, typically give bad nutritional advice. A classic example of this is the bad nutritional advice to not eat eggs, and its variation "toss out every other egg white."

This bit of bad nutritional advice arises for two reasons:

1. Egg yolks contain cholesterol (true).

2. Eating cholesterol raises your cholesterol (false).

The cholesterol in an egg yolk will not, in itself raise your blood cholesterol.

First of all, the cholesterol in the egg does not survive the acid in the stomach. So, it no longer exists once the eggs you just ate hit the duodenum.

Secondly, cholesterol in the blood is your body's response to leaking blood vessels. If your cholesterol is "high," you need to fix the cause rather than try to lower the cholesterol level by discarding perfectly good food.

So, there is no nutritional reason to discard egg yolks. There are many reasons to eat those egg yolks. And where you get those eggs from also matters, but we'll cover that later.

As an anecdote, I was on a 12-egg a day diet in high school. I did this after seeing the Rocky movie and got fantastic results from raw eggs in a blender. The source is important, or raw eggs may kill you. My total cholesterol was about 120.

Over the years since then, while still eating copious quantities of whole eggs, I've always had an excellent cholesterol profile. There are other people who have had this same experience, and the reasons for that are things you now understand by virtue of having red the preceding text. Eating egg yolks does not raise your cholesterol. In fact, by eating properly-sourced eggs, you will ingest sufficient Omega 3 to lower your cholesterol. A person with high cholesterol would be wise to eat a dozen eggs a day to help correct that problem (assuming the eggs are properly sourced).

It's interesting that doctors will tell you to avoid egg yolks because they contain cholesterol, which is a fat. How else do you get fat-soluble vitamins? You will, for example, find Vitamin D in egg yolks. We sell Vitamin D test sample kits for taking the blood spot samples needed to evaluate Vitamin D levels. The lab that processes these samples told us that the only person thus far (in all the years they've offered this service) to not show a Vitamin D deficiency was a woman on the Australian Olympic team. And your doctor advises you to discard this source of Vitamin D? Is that insane, or just ignorant?

Egg yolks contain many other nutrients that people (especially in the USA) tend to be deficient in. For example, Omega 3 fatty acids. You probably know a lot about those. Now, you also know you get those from egg yolks. But only if the eggs are sourced properly.

The egg white has more protein, potassium, and sodium than the yolk. Other than that, it's literally a pale imitation of the yolk's nutritional density.
 

We found a great analysis of the egg yolk vs. the egg white, if you're interested. That author claims that egg yolks, if not discarded, would solve the most common nutritional deficiencies among Americans.