A New Study Calls Eggs Into Question, But Are They Really That Bad?

Are eggs good or bad for us? That question has been a favorite among researchers and healthy eaters alike for years.

The verdict seemed to be that, yes, they are a healthy option, but a recent study has called them into question.

The study published in the journal of the American Medical Association, found that those who ate two eggs a day had a 27 percent higher risk for heart disease.

And that’s a reason to pause, given the high rate of heart disease in the United States, said Thomas Sherman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University.

“It’s not a huge increase risk in heart disease,” he said. “But given that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of Americans, I think it is something that people should pay attention to.“

Ultimately, people shouldn’t freak out. As a rule of thumb, Sherman said to stick with common sense: Don’t eat too much sugar, cook your own food, control your portions and eat a plant-based diet.

Here are three takeaways from the study, according to Sherman.

Looking at eggs as the primary cause of heart disease isn’t accurate.

There are a number of factors that play into heart disease, Sherman said, including body weight, exercise, genetics and diet.

“There are just so many things you can do to decrease your risk, so many things that increase your risk and diet is just one of them,” Sherman said. “But looking at eggs as a contributing factor in a society where heart disease is essentially an epidemic, I think it’s an important issue to talk about.”

Human nutrition research is incredibly challenging.

“We’re not a group of animals that we can give a defined diet to for many years at a time,” he said. “And so we really try to gather research in the best way that we can, and that’s typically, unfortunately, questionnaires.”

And that leaves plenty of room for error because people aren’t very good at remembering what they eat despite epidemiologists efforts to introduce controls, correlations and models, he said.

A plant-based diet is best.

That doesn’t mean you have to be a vegetarian, Sherman said, but the bulk of your calories should come from vegetables, fruits, lean meats, seafood, whole grains and polyunsaturated fats.

“There is a lot of room in that for accommodating comfort foods, there’s a lot of room in that for accommodating individual tastes,” he said. “Spend more time learning to cook and buying ingredients for food instead of allowing corporations to cook for us and fast-food restaurants to cook for us.”