Protein is essential for healthy and balanced diet. It helps to grow and repair your body. Protein repairs and grows muscle. But protein must come from healthy sources. Processed and fatty protein will increase risk of obesity and heart disease. Healthy protein will help to stay young and reduce risk of heart disease.
Protein may come from animal and plant sources. Egg is one of the healthy sources of protein and experts now agree that egg don’t increase risk of heart disease. Some people classify egg as ‘superfood’. Because eggs are packed with all the nutrients required to grow an embryo.
A single large egg (50 g) may supply more than 70 calories, 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat. Don’t worry, nowadays fat from eggs are considered healthy. Egg also contain vitamin A, C, D, E, K, sodium, calcium and zinc. You will get around 211 mg cholesterol from a large egg which is well below the recommended daily allowance of 300 mg. So egg is unlikely to increase blood cholesterol level. You can go for pastured egg for higher omega-3 content.
Increasing cholesterol consumption doesn’t necessarily increase our cholesterol level in blood stream. Our liver needs to produce large amount of cholesterol. So liver reduces cholesterol production with increased supply from diet. However in the case of some disorders, harmful LDL cholesterol level in blood stream may increase with increased consumption. There may be some genetic disorders also. For most of the population egg is a very safe source of protein to maintain health.
There is other type of cholesterol called high-density lipoprotein or HDL, which is also known as ‘good cholesterol’. It is proved from several studies that egg can increase HDL cholesterol level, which means egg will reduce risk of stroke and heart disease. In fact an egg a day will keep doctor away.
