Although we know how nutritious an egg is, we fail to eat on a daily basis. There are numerous reasons behind this. One of which is eating too many eggs would lead to higher risk of cardiovascular diseases. There have been inconsistent talks about consumption of an egg per day for many decades. Since cardiovascular diseases are rampant and we don’t want to take the risk by consuming too many eggs per week; however, is the statement correct? To understand whether an egg really does harm for our health, some researchers from China and the UK lead by Professors Liming Li and Dr Canqing Yu made a study on that.
These researchers used data from CKB study in which about 512891 individuals aged between 30 to 79 who belong to different parts of China from the year 2004-2008 were studied. They were asked about their egg consumption habits which are whether they eat an egg every day or no egg per day or moderate consumption for the previous study. For the new one, they considered 416213 individuals who are free from cardiovascular diseases and cancer, results of which showed that people who eat an egg a day have a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases than people who don’t eat or never eaten any egg.
In particular, daily egg consumers (up to one egg/day) had a 26% lower risk of haemorrhagic stroke -- the type of stroke with a higher prevalence rate in China than in high-income countries -- a 28% lower risk of haemorrhagic stroke death and an 18% lower risk of CVD death. In addition, there was a 12% reduction in risk of ischaemic heart disease observed for people consuming eggs daily (estimated amount 5.32 eggs/week), when compared with the 'never/rarely' consumption category (2.03 eggs/week).
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Therefore, we should not fear to eat an egg per day as it contains a prominent source of dietary cholesterol as well as vitamins, high-quality protein and many essential components. According to Heart UK, a single egg that weighs 58g contains a teaspoon of fat which is about 4.6g, of which only one-fourth of the fat is saturated that causes cardiovascular diseases.
The process of cooking an egg plays a vital role in getting full nutrition to our body. I prefer to boil them as I get most nutrients out of it. Frying an egg has not been recommended by any dietitians until now. A raw or partially cooked egg may be fine to eat provided it is under limitations given by dietitians. Thus, ensure that your egg is cooked thoroughly and get numerous nutrients every single day.