It’s no yolk: for decades we have gotten dietary whiplash from the back-and-forth science on whether eggs are good for them.

But a major new study will have many egg-lovers relieved: You can enjoy an egg a day without having to worry about your heart.

“Moderate egg intake, which is about one egg per day in most people, does not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease or mortality even if people have a history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes,” said study lead author Mahshid Dehghan. She’s an investigator at the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

The study, which analyzed data on more than 177,000 people, was funded by various provincial government health agencies in Ontario, and nonprofit groups focused on heart health. It received no funding from the egg industry.CONTINUE READING BELOW

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Dehghan’s group pored over data from three large, long-term international studies, all conducted at the PHRI. The three studies involved people with various income levels living in 50 countries on six continents, so the results are widely applicable, the researchers said.

Most of the people in the studies had one or fewer eggs a day, suggesting that this level of consumption is safe, Dehghan said.

“Also, no association was found between egg intake and blood cholesterol, its components or other risk factors,” she said in a McMaster news release. “These results are robust and widely applicable to both healthy individuals and those with vascular disease.”

Eggs are an inexpensive source of essential nutrients, but some nutritional guidelines have advised that people should limit intake to fewer than three eggs a week, due to concerns they increase the risk of heart disease. But as study principal investigator Salim Yusuf pointed out, prior studies about eggs and health have yielded conflicting findings.

“This is because most of these studies were relatively small or moderate in size and did not include individuals from a large number of countries,” Yusuf said in the news release. He directs the PHRI.