Recommendations vary, but three to seven eggs per week is fine for healthy people.
People who already have heart disease or diabetes “need to be more careful,” said Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, but even for them, eggs are relatively benign compared to other cardiac risk factors like consuming saturated fat or trans fat, smoking, not eating enough fruits and vegetables and not getting enough exercise.
The average large egg contains 215 milligrams of cholesterol, all of it in the yolk, said Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Weight Management Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day, so eating one egg means you shouldn’t consume much more cholesterol — from red meat, cheese or milk — that day, he added.
Since most of the cholesterol in an egg is in the yolk, one solution, if you’re worried, is to eat just egg whites, or use egg products with few or no yolks.
The other issue to consider, is what you would eat instead if you skipped your morning egg. Switching to a bagel with jam, for instance, has little nutritional value and raises blood sugar, said Willett. Do hold the bacon, though.