Eating eggs is a healthy dietary addition and does not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes, Australian researchers have said.
The simple ingredient, which can be cooked in a number of different ways, has always been a subject of controversy when it comes to whether it is healthy to eat.
Last year a Netflix documentary entitled What the Health stated that eating just one egg daily was as bad for life expectancy as smoking five cigarettes per day. But a plenitude of recent research has debunked this myth, helping to unscramble misinformation about eggs for our health.
This new University of Sydney study was split into two parts, which saw participants follow a series of different egg-related diets.
The first trial involved adults with type 2 diabetes eating 12 eggs a week, with researchers comparing their health outcomes to those who had limited their egg intake to just two a week. After three months the researchers said they did not observe any difference in cardiovascular risk factors.
In the follow-up study the same participants were asked to follow a weight loss diet full of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (such as avocado and olive oil, which are considered valuable components of a low carb diet) and continuing with either high or low egg consumption.
After a further six months, again, no cardiovascular risk elements were discovered and everyone lost weight, irrespective of how many eggs they had eaten over the course of the trial.
Research program leader Dr Nicholas Fuller from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia, said: “Despite differing advice around safe levels of egg consumption for people with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, our research indicates people do not need to hold back from eating eggs if this is part of a healthy diet.
“A lot of this epidemiological research showing that high egg consumption (six or more eggs per week) is detrimental to a person’s health was conducted at a time when we were told to avoid eggs.”
The results have been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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