Vegan Blogger Claims Eating Eggs Is Worse For Your Health Than Smoking

It feels as though you can find a study somewhere on the internet to support just about any of our dietary wishes: cheddar is good for your eyesight, Guinness is six of your five a day, coffee increases libido.

However, one thing that is categorically considered very bad for your health in 2019 is smoking. Despite this, one vegan food blogger has claimed that eating eggs is much worse for your health than breaking out the ciggies.

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The woman, who goes by the Twitter name Plant Based Barb, claimed the cholesterol in egg yolks makes them more damaging than cigarettes.

She said: "One egg = five cigarettes!? Egg yolks are loaded with cholesterol. A medium-sized egg contains 186 mg of cholesterol, which is 62 percent of the recommended intake. Eating eggs is worse for your health than smoking!"

It is unclear how Barb calculated that the cholesterol in eggs is more damaging than all the poisons and tar in cigarettes, but it seems safe to say her conclusion is erroneous.

First of all, her tweet is based on an outdated belief that cholesterol content in food directly affects blood cholesterol levels.

Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, explained: "In the past it was thought that people should limit the number of eggs they eat to three to four a week because they contain cholesterol. It is the egg yolks that have the cholesterol.

"However, the misconceptions around eggs and cholesterol largely stemmed from incorrect conclusions drawn from early research that dietary cholesterol contributed to raised blood cholesterol levels.

"Now current research shows that for most healthy people, cholesterol in food, such as eggs, has a much smaller effect on blood levels of total cholesterol and harmful LDL cholesterol, especially when compared with the much greater and more harmful effects of saturated fatty acids found in foods such as butter and fatty meat. Eggs are, in fact, low in saturated fat.

"Recent research has also shown that moderate egg consumption - up to one a day - does not increase heart disease risk in healthy individuals and can be part of a healthy diet."

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That's the whole cholesterol basis of her argument debunked then - but even if eggs were incredibly bad for you, they would have a long way to go to do the same sort of damage as smoking.

According to the NHS, smoking is the number one cause of preventable deaths in England, accounting for 80,000 a year.

So if you wanna go vegan, by all means do. But don't trade in your eggs for ciggies and expect your health to improve.

Topics: Food, Interesting, Community

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey