Whole eggs don't raise your risk of heart disease - in fact, according to nutrition coach Liz Wolfe, it may be worse for your health to not eat them, reports huffingtonpost.com.
Egg yolks, along with other sources of saturated fat and cholesterol, came under fire in the wake of research by Nikolai Anichkov at the turn of the 20th century.
Anichkov tested on rabbits and found that cholesterol promotes heart disease.
Wolfe counters: “Rabbits have nothing in common with human bodies ... and cholesterol isn't part of their diet anyway.”
Researcher Ancel Keys made headlines in the 1950s with his Seven Countries' Study, which almost single-handedly set the line of thinking on saturated fat that prevails today.
Keys claimed that after looking at the average diets of populations in seven different countries, he was able to determine that those who ate the most animal fat had the highest rates of heart disease. But his analysis was flawed.
Although Keys' data did show a connection between fat and heart disease, he couldn't demonstrate that the relationship was causal.
Furthermore, while mortality rates for heart disease were higher in the countries that consumed the most animal fat, deaths from nearly ever other cause were lower -- and overall life expectancy was higher.