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Your cholesterol can increase significantly if you have a diet high in cholesterol. One of familiar foods that contain cholesterol is eggs. Eating too many eggs can lead to high cholesterol. Nevertheless, some studies found that eating them in moderation doesn’t significantly affect to the cholesterol levels. So, how much cholesterol in eggs (yolk and whites)?
You might also like to read what is normal cholesterol level and best foods to lower your cholesterol, before continuing!
1 large egg contains about 186 milligrams (mg) or more of cholesterol which all or most of them in the yolk -- but the eggs whites don’t have cholesterol.
You might also like to read what is normal cholesterol level and best foods to lower your cholesterol, before continuing!
1 large egg contains about 186 milligrams (mg) or more of cholesterol which all or most of them in the yolk -- but the eggs whites don’t have cholesterol.
How many eggs you can eat /day to keep safely the range of your cholesterol levels? According to a published article on MayoClinic:
- For people with health problems associated with hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), like cardiovascular disease, the dietary cholesterol should be limited at less than 200 mg /day. This recommendation is also recommended for people with high LDL cholesterol or individuals with diabetes.
- And the dietary cholesterol should be limited at less than 300 mg /day for healthy people.
This means you should avoid eating more than one egg per day! According to the American Heart Association -- ‘1 egg a day is OK or acceptable’, but if you eat 1 egg on this day you should also limit other high-cholesterol foods for the rest of your day, particularly if you have a diet to lower your LDL cholesterol.
However, there are also some essential nutrients that can be found in the eggs. Regardless to the amounts of cholesterol in them, there are a lot of health benefits & other advantages from them. This is one of major reasons why eggs can be pretty controversial topic when it comes to lowering cholesterol.
Generally, many experts believe that ‘eating them in moderation’ will not significantly affect to the levels of the cholesterol and the risk of heart disease.
What else you need to know?
- Medium or small eggs are much more recommended than larger ones for people who have high LDL level, diabetes, or heart disease.
- For better result on controlling your cholesterol, there are also available low cholesterol eggs. Unfortunately their price is usually more expensive than the regular ones. They can be produced from chickens that have a vegetarian diet & canola oil of their feeding.
If you have a cholesterol-lowering diet and you in doubt what you should do to ‘eat or avoid’ cholesterol in egg, ask to your registered dietitian or doctor for more advices!
In addition, read also some facts of cholesterol lowering supplements!
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Reference: MayoClinic and WebMD
