Fact Or Fiction: Egg Yolks Are Bad For You
If you've lived most of the last decade (or your entire life) eating egg white omelets because you believed egg yolks were bad for you, we're sorry to say that you may have been giving up the golden yellow goodness for no reason.
"Eating an egg a day as a part of a healthy diet for healthy individuals is a reasonable thing to do," Jo Ann Carson, professor of clinical nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told the American Heart Association. And nutritionist Tamar Samuels agrees, telling the Huffington Post, "Eggs are an excellent source of several key nutrients found in both the egg yolk and the egg white. Eating a whole egg gives us the biggest bang for our buck in terms of both macro and micronutrients."
So why have egg yolks got such a bad rap for all these years? What exactly has changed?
Eating cholesterol from healthy foods, like eggs, is generally fine
According to Autumn Ehsaei, RDN, U.S. nutrition guidelines have changed their stance on dietary cholesterol. "When nutrition guidelines suggested limiting fat and dietary cholesterol in the diet, people became wary of eating the yolk, and egg whites became king," Ehsaei explained to MyDomaine. "We now know that dietary intake of cholesterol does not affect blood lipids to the extent that we thought, so eating cholesterol from healthy foods in appropriate amounts is not much of a health concern for most people," she continued. In other words, as long as you eat eggs in a measured quantity, they're not going to be harmful to your heart or health.
Anthony Komaroff, M.D., also notes that how you serve your eggs matters, suggesting you eat them with whole grain toast, salad, and vegetables (via Harvard Health Publishing). Unfortunately, bacon paired with eggs are never going to be considered healthy (even if the eggs are).