Cholesterol – Eggs and Cholesterol

Cholesterol – Eggs and Cholesterol

There is a lot of misleading information out there about the use of eggs and the effect on your health. For some time, it was believed that if you had issues with high cholesterol that you should cut out the yolk on your egg. As it turns out, this really is not an issue for healthy people, and proper dietary intake is not harmful unless you have already developed an excessive condition. So what about all the egg choices you now have? Here, we’ll go over the facts about eggs and then you will be able to make an informed decision about which eggs you should buy for yourself.

Let’s start out by explaining the different choices you now have at your local grocery store. You have white eggs and brown eggs. You have eggs that come in many sizes from just “eggs” to large eggs, extra large, and jumbo eggs. Then you have organic eggs and free range eggs! There are also eggs which have been enhanced with omega-3s. There are a lot of eggs and if you are like many people, you can’t tell which ones are supposed to be best. So let’s start with brown eggs. The color makes no difference except to differentiate the hen’s breed. So certainly your cholesterol level won’t be affected by buying brown eggs instead of white ones. It’s not like bread!

So next, there is size. Size really doesn’t account for anything except how much egg you get. Omega 3 enhanced eggs can have an effect on your cholesterol levels by helping you get more of those into your diet. Studies show that they have 7x the omega-3s of their competitor eggs. Organic eggs mean the hen wasn’t fed bad things, and free range means that the hens aren’t cooped up unnaturally, but rather were given “free range” to walk around and behave normally.

Some testing was done in 2005 on free range eggs and found them far more healthy than their competition. The eggs produced by the free range hens contained 1/3 less cholesterol than their counterparts, had A� less saturated fat, 2/3 more vitamin A, 7 times more beta carotene, 3 times more vitamin E, and twice the omega-3 fatty acids. So this study alone proves that free range eggs could be worth an extra dollar for the dozen. Whatever your choice, you now are educated with the fundamental differences. So if you choose to buy your brown eggs in jumbo size, you know those aren’t the critical selection factors!