The Harvard Physicians’ Health Study suggests that those eating an egg a day live shorter lives.
Is One Egg a Day Too Much?
4.1/5 - (17 votes)
Though alfalfa sprouts are indeed too risky to eat, eggs are linked every year to literally a thousand times more food poisoning. Salmonella-infected eggs cause a foodborne epidemic every year in the United States, sickening more than 100,000 Americans annually.
Food poisoning aside though, what about that egg? What if the egg is boiled hard to kill off any bugs? Now, yes, eggs are the single most concentrated source of cholesterol in the diet, but we’re not talking an omelet here, just a single egg a day. How many think just one egg a day is harmful to our health? Harmless? Helpful?
The answer is that an egg a day is indeed helpful—if you want to die an early death. The Harvard Physicians’ Study; 20,000 doctors followed for 20 years, and those who ate just one egg a day or more had significantly higher all-cause mortality—meaning the more eggs we eat, the shorter we may live. Whereas eating oatmeal every morning, based on a new study of 40,000 women, may extend our lives.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Dianne Moore.
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- L. Djoussé & J.M. Gaziano. Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians’ Health Study. Am J Clin Nutr, 87(4):964-969, 2008.
- D.R. Jacobs Jr., L.F. Andersen, & R. Blomhoff. Whole-grain consumption is associated with a reduced risk of noncardiovascular, noncancer death attributed to inflammatory diseases in the Iowa Women’s Health Study. Am J Clin Nutr, 85(6):1606-1614, 2007.
Though alfalfa sprouts are indeed too risky to eat, eggs are linked every year to literally a thousand times more food poisoning. Salmonella-infected eggs cause a foodborne epidemic every year in the United States, sickening more than 100,000 Americans annually.
Food poisoning aside though, what about that egg? What if the egg is boiled hard to kill off any bugs? Now, yes, eggs are the single most concentrated source of cholesterol in the diet, but we’re not talking an omelet here, just a single egg a day. How many think just one egg a day is harmful to our health? Harmless? Helpful?
The answer is that an egg a day is indeed helpful—if you want to die an early death. The Harvard Physicians’ Study; 20,000 doctors followed for 20 years, and those who ate just one egg a day or more had significantly higher all-cause mortality—meaning the more eggs we eat, the shorter we may live. Whereas eating oatmeal every morning, based on a new study of 40,000 women, may extend our lives.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Dianne Moore.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- L. Djoussé & J.M. Gaziano. Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians’ Health Study. Am J Clin Nutr, 87(4):964-969, 2008.
- D.R. Jacobs Jr., L.F. Andersen, & R. Blomhoff. Whole-grain consumption is associated with a reduced risk of noncardiovascular, noncancer death attributed to inflammatory diseases in the Iowa Women’s Health Study. Am J Clin Nutr, 85(6):1606-1614, 2007.
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Title
Is One Egg a Day Too Much?
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
More on the health risks of egg consumption:
Does Cholesterol Size Matter?
Eggs and Choline: Something Fishy
Eggs and Arterial Function
Eggs and Diabetes
For additional context, check out my blog posts: Stool Size and Breast Cancer Risk and Bad Egg.
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