The internet is awash with diet and training claims that don’t stand up to scrutiny
Matters were taken to the extreme recently when a vegan food blogger claimed eggs are ‘worse for your health’ than smoking.
Eggs were once one of those foods incorrectly labelled as unhealthy due to their fat content.
It’s now well-established that eating fat doesn’t suddenly make you fat. Weight gain occurs when you consume too many calories. Eat too much of anything, and your health could suffer.
In the case of vegan food blogger Plant Lover Barb, eggs were said to be as risky for your health as smoking cigarettes.
Cholesterol content was given as the reason for this apparent danger – but the level found in eggs has never been proven to hinder your health.
One egg = five cigarettes!? Egg yolks are loaded with cholesterol.
A medium-sized egg contains 186 mg of cholesterol, which is 62 percent of the recommended intake.
Eating eggs is worse for your health then smoking!— barbraw (@barbraw28) July 22, 2019
Eggs do contain a fair amount of cholesterol. But it’s a big stretch to suggest that this cholesterol will negatively impact your health.
It’s a myth that science has thankfully debunked.
In some people, egg intake does cause an increase in blood cholesterol levels. In others, it doesn’t. But crucially, in both groups, this doesn’t correspond to increased risk of heart disease.
Is the cholesterol in eggs bad for you?
If you don’t suffer from existing health problems – particularly heart-related issues – then egg consumption will likely be safe.
If you’re relatively healthy, the University of Connecticut discovered that eating eggs does not seem to increase your chances of suffering from heart disease. And that’s even when there’s a slight rise in cholesterol levels.
Experts at online nutrition database Examine.com have concluded that eating an egg or two is safe for virtually everyone.
They write: “some studies link egg consumption to an increase in cholesterol levels; some do not; but no study has shown an increase in risk of cardiovascular disease.”
Even if eggs posed a higher risk than they really do, would it still make sense to compare them to cigarettes?
According to the NHS, some 489,000 people were admitted to hospitals in England last year for health problems related to smoking. This is a hefty 26% of all hospital admissions for the year.
