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by NzNz 3633 days ago
The issue with eggs as an everyday breakfast is cholesterol, not everything in your diet is about measuring calories. A single egg provides 60% of the recommended daily intake which means you have to be extra careful with the rest of your diet if you don't want to increase your risks of heart disease. Sausage can also have a decent amount of cholesterol, although not as high as eggs.

By introducing both of these as your daily breakfast, you also limit the choices of food you can have for lunch and dinner. Sauces like mayonnaise have eggs, you probably shouldn't eat the occasional omelette, which is a tasty, occasional way of enjoying eggs (I particularly love them with ceps or asparagus), chinese fried rice, baked goods, tortilla, desserts like crepes, the list goes on. None of these are foods that should be eaten on a daily basis, but even less so if you introduced foods high in cholesterol right into your breakfast.

5 comments

As tallanvor notes, cholesterol-egg connection is pretty weak. Upwards of 80% of your cholesterol is manufactured by your body. Since Timothy Ferris boosted the slow-carb diet, there's been a huge increase in the sample set for 'regularly eating eggs for breakfast' - with no negatives (that I've seen reported, at least). Plus there's the question of whether cholesterol is really a good indicator for heart disease - last I read on this stuff (Ben Goldacre's work) I got the impression there's some correlation, but no causation. And not in a weaselly kind of way, but in a we shouldn't be so focussed on cholesterol figures way.

Personal data point - 3 eggs almost every breakfast, with some sliced meat or avocado - for about 6 years, with no adverse affects. And with no concern about 'extra' eggs in lunches and dinners (fritata, chachouka, tortilla, quiche, etc).

All the latest studies seem to show that dietary cholesterol actually has little to no effect on the cholesterol in your blood.
Dietary cholesterol has been thoroughly debunked as a cause of heart disease. Starchy,sugary diets and the elevated triglyceride levels they lead to are much stronger in their link, resulting in a very accurate indicator of heart-disease risk, the HDL/Triglyceride ratio.

Eggs are loaded with HDL in addition to LDL, so they actually boost the top number. However, drinking soda or eating sugary pancakes in the same day will radically increase the bottom number.

I became keenly interested in the science on cholesterol and diet ten years ago, because my father, who has been a vegan since the mid 90's, had his first heart attack. He's subsequently had more. He consumes zero animal products, and we have no heart disease in our family history.

Edit:

Your food politics doc you linked to is just AWFUL. It makes a point about industry funding of cholesterol research since the 1990's, but ignores the immense funding and lobbying by the agricultural commodities producers (General Mills, for example) to push the original lipid hypothesis science that spurred "eggs kill you" thinking in the 1970s. I love how they use this basic correlation (increased funding and cholesterol being vindicated) to conclude causation. That's the flawed thinking that led to the bullshit nutritional standards we have today.

The studies saying eggs were bad for were funded by the cereal industry...
Even if this is true, that doesn't mean they should be blindly disregarded.
No but they should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Assuming that eggs are actually bad for you and do contribute to heart disease (they seem to go back and forth on this every second Tuesday...), I'd still take the heart disease over the diabetes from the sugar-blasted breakfast foods.
It doesn't have to be either. Common breakfasts in france include eating 1 yogurt, or 1 croissant, or 1 toast with butter. Some people do eat 1 toast with jam, which might fit into your "sugar blasted" category.

In general, we're pretty light on breakfast and we don't have high diabete prevalence compared to countries like the US or even Germany.

I don't think 1 toast with jam comes anywhere near sugar blasted. Comparing to the (plastic) stuff I see people (not exclusively in the US either as children in Spain and the UK seem to do it as well) eat.
As if anyone has ever shown diabetes is caused solely by sugary foods. You might be getting a package deal there.
Anecdotally, I eat two eggs with hot sauce and toast for breakfast every morning. Lipid panel just came back fine. When I switched from cereal I stopped feeling like crap all morning. (And I wasn't eating sugary cereal to start with -- mostly plain yogurt, oatmeal, and a few raisins. Dessert cereals like granola are a whole other level of misery afterwards.)
If I had to restrict my diet that much, I'd rather die early.