For decades, Americans were told to hold the yolk. A 2025 randomized crossover trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and a large pooled analysis from 2022 now point in the same direction. Eggs themselves are not driving heart-disease risk in generally healthy adults.
The AJCN trial, led by Professor Jon Buckley at the University of South Australia, put 61 adults through three different diets for five weeks each. In the arm where volunteers ate two eggs a day but kept saturated fat low, LDL cholesterol actually fell compared with a control diet that included only one egg a week but had more saturated fat.
"Eggs have long been unfairly cracked by outdated dietary advice," Buckley said in the university's announcement of the study in July 2025.
Across all three diets, saturated fat intake tracked with rising LDL. Dietary cholesterol from eggs did not. The study was funded by the Egg Nutrition Center, a detail readers can weigh against the fact that its results line up with a much larger independent evidence base.
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What the wider evidence shows
The trial fits a broader pattern. A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Nutrition in 2022 pooled 55 prospective cohort studies covering 2.77 million participants. It found no significant link between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease mortality. Each 100 mg per day of extra dietary cholesterol was associated with a 6 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality, but not with CVD death specifically.
Dietary cholesterol is not the same as blood cholesterol
The confusion comes from a shared word. Dietary cholesterol is what you eat. Blood cholesterol is what circulates in your bloodstream. Most of the cholesterol in your body is made by your liver, and the liver dials its own production down when you eat more.
Registered dietitian Keith Ayoob of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine put it plainly in a February 2026 National Geographic report. "The biggest dietary driver of blood cholesterol is not cholesterol in food but saturated fat," he said. Preventive medicine specialist David L. Katz, past president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, added in the same piece that the majority of blood cholesterol is made in the liver, not delivered directly from the diet.
Who should still be cautious
The reassurance is not universal. The Cleveland Clinic advises adults without heart disease to keep to about one egg, or two egg whites, per day. For people who already have heart disease or high cholesterol, it recommends limiting yolks to about four per week.
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People with familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic disorder that keeps LDL very high from birth, are a separate case. Lipid clinics generally advise them to lean on egg whites and keep yolks to a minimum, alongside the medication that is the main treatment. Anyone on a statin or with a family history of early heart disease should confirm their own target with a physician before adjusting egg intake.
Preparation is doing more work than the yolk
If yolks are not the main culprit, what goes on the plate with them is. An egg scrambled in butter with two strips of bacon delivers a very different saturated-fat load than a poached egg on whole-grain toast with avocado.
Over 30 days at one egg a day, that adds up to roughly 30 yolks. Both the 2025 AJCN trial and the 2022 meta-analysis suggest this level of intake is unlikely to push LDL in the wrong direction for a generally healthy adult, provided saturated fat in the rest of the diet stays low.
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This article is made and published by Jesper Bengtson, who may have used AI in the preparation.