Eggs and Cholesterol Have a Complicated Health Relationship — What Have We Gotten Wrong?

Key Takeaways on Eggs and Cholesterol

• In the 1960s, the American Heart Association (AHA) issued a warning that egg consumption led to higher cholesterol levels. As a result, egg consumption plummeted in the U.S.
• A 2015 study found that the AHA warning may have been slightly overstated; sentiment around eggs and cholesterol levels began to improve, and consumption rose.
• Another study from 2025 actually links eggs to improving cholesterol levels.

In 1968, the egg had a great fall. The American Heart Association (AHA) warned that egg consumption led to high cholesterol. They advised adults to limit their egg intake to no more than three whole eggs per week.

Many Americans heeded the advice. They slashed scrambled eggs from breakfast, stopped bringing egg salad sandwiches to picnics, and omitted poached eggs from frisée salads.

Then, in 2015, the guidelines changed, and cholesterol warnings were removed. Eggs were exonerated. In recent years, researchers have realized the real culprit behind high cholesterol. And they’ve also learned how eggs may actually combat, not cause, high cholesterol.

Warnings for Eggs and Cholesterol

Consumers typically ignore dietary guidelines, but the 1968 warning against eggs was different. It was one of the first food items called out by a health organization as problematic, according to a 2015 study in Nutrients. The AHA “admonished” the egg, as one researcher put it, and argued that eggs needed to be restricted to lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease.

“Past dietary recommendations were based on the assumption that the high levels of cholesterol in eggs would increase LDL-cholesterol, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease,” Jonathan D. Buckley, the dean of the School of Allied Health and Human Performance at Adelaide University in Australia, told Discover.

The egg was tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty. Long-term studies have confirmed that American consumers avoided eggs in the decades following the AHA warning.

In the early 1970s, participants in a long-term study reported eating a mean of 3.6 eggs per week. But in the follow-up surveys in the 1980s and 1990s, respondents said they had dropped their egg consumption to a mean of 1.8 per week, according to a 2025 study in Nutrients.

Read More: How Eggs Can Harbor Salmonella, Even When They Look Perfectly Clean

Rethinking Eggs Impact on Cholesterol

After egg warnings were ditched in 2015, the egg’s public image began to improve, and respondents to the long-term study reported eating eggs at a rate closer to what was seen in the 1970s.

Scientists also changed their stance on eggs after evidence confirmed that although eggs are high in cholesterol, they do not raise LDL-cholesterol in most people.

“We now know that it is saturated fat in the diet that is the problem, not eggs,” Buckley told Discover.

Once eggs were acquitted and scientists knew the real culprit was saturated fat, researchers began to question if eating eggs daily could help a person lower their cholesterol.

In 2025, Buckley was part of a team of researchers who measured whether dietary cholesterol or saturated fat had an impact on a person’s LDL-cholesterol. They found eggs to be the ideal study subject.

“Eggs are a bit unique in that they are one of the few foods […] that is high in cholesterol and low in saturated fat, so they are ideal for using in a study to manipulate dietary cholesterol and saturated fat intakes independently […] to examine the effects of each on LDL-cholesterol,” Buckley told Discover.

Eggs May Actually Improve Cholesterol

In the study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 48 participants finished a five-week restricted diet. They were split into three groups. The EGG group was instructed to eat two eggs per day as part of a high-cholesterol, low-saturated-fat diet. The EGG-FREE group couldn’t eat eggs, and they had to aim for a low-cholesterol, high-saturated fat diet. The control group, CON, had a high-saturated-fat, high-cholesterol diet with up to one egg per week.

The participants started the study with similar LDL-cholesterol levels. But after five weeks, the EGG group had lower LDL cholesterol than the other two groups.

“This means that the more saturated fat a person ate, the higher their LDL-cholesterol was,” Buckley told Discover. “There was no such relationship with dietary cholesterol intake. Therefore, it is saturated fat intake that increases LDL-cholesterol, not cholesterol intake.”

Does this also mean people can go back to eating eggs?

“Yes, people can have eggs every day,” Buckley said. “We have shown that it is fine to eat two eggs per day.”

This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.

Read More: Why Do We Eat Eggs or Cereal for Breakfast and How Many Eggs Should We Eat in a Day?

Article Sources

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