My wife believes we shouldn’t give Liam eggs more than 3 or 4 times per week based on the medical sites she’s visited. I’ve read several medical sources that indicate 1 a day isn’t bad.
So what are your thoughts for those of you with Toddlers? One a day too much?
I think compared to the garbage that most Americans are eating every day an egg every day or even several is probably a far better option than whatever would be eaten if not for it… that’s just my assumption though I haven’t exactly studied it. Our family raises laying hens and eat eggs every day.
The idea that eggs are bad for you, IMO, is outdated. Unless he’s in his 70s with heart disease or something, I see no reason to limit them. That’s my personal opinion.
A few things: Not sure of their quality, etc. Just from some quick Googling.
I am aware of @TiaG’s research, but I agree with your wife. This is why.
When I was a kid, my family switched from using butter to using margerine, because medical science has"proven" it was better. So that’s what we ate while I was growing up. We know how this ended up. At the same time, there was a bunch of medical science at the time telling us that we should eat high carb low fat – so we ate high carb low fat all through my childhood. We also know how this ended up.
I am not 100% confident that the science behind “egg cholesterol is not bad for you” will still remain valid another 20 years. So, just in case, I figure it is better not to abuse eggs. At home, we use eggbeaters in the morning. My son has eggs every day (so as to avoid high carb breakfasts since he is insulin sensitive in the morning), so, 5-6 days a week, he has eggbeater omelet or scrambled eggs, and, 1-2 days a week, he gets real fried eggs.
The other advantage of eggbeaters is that I don’t have to clean up an additional bowl to break eggs into (or the counter onto which I break the eggs) 
Margarine-- invented in a laboratory.
High carb low fat-- invented by agricultural subsidies and bad public policy…
Egg-- invented by nature in its exact form
I’ll take my chances
Yeah, eggs are fine—the whole dietary cholesterol is bad is based on entirely faulty assumptions that consuming cholesterol raises blood levels of cholesterol, when that’s just not how cholesterol in the blood is sourced. It’s made by the body, from fats. It’s sort of similar to the nonsense of the 90s that eating dietary fat will make you fat, so just eat low fat high carb! Bagels, snackwells, pasta! Can’t get fat if there’s no fat! We all know how valid that was…
@Michel, all I know is that on my husband’s side they all have familial hypercholesterolemia and when he was told he read a book called Cholesterol Down! And basically it’s well known that food with cholesterol has only a modest effect on cholesterol – in fact, the number one dietary thing a person can do to lower their cholesterol is up their fiber intake. He started eating things like oatmeal and psyllium husk and his cholesterol went way down, to the point he does not need statins. He eats eggs whenever he feels like it and he eats a lot of fatty fish. Anyways, obviously this is just anecdata but it really made me skeptical of the notion that cholesterol in the diet is bad per se. I think dietary cholesterol comes along with a bunch of other stuff that is bad for you in a lot of foods (my personal pet theory is the combination of high carbs & high fat are rough on the body), and so the studies showing harm are likely identifying other dietary components, rather than purely cholesterol per se.
That said, I eat very little animal-based food and have very low cholesterol, so I guess it might help me?
Personally, my opinion is that people should not consciously restrict cholesterol but rather try to dramatically up the content of food that is whole, unprocessed and with lots fiber – they may naturally wind up eating less cholesterol as a byproduct but it shouldn’t be the primary goal. Just my two cents of course.
I agree with your whole assessment above, in particular with respect to food with cholesterol in general!
At the same time, I am reluctant to endorse eating real eggs more or less daily in my son’s case, because of the possibility that in twenty years’ time we will find out that the existing research is inadequate. So, for me, it;‘s a risk management issue, which is why I agree with Harold’ s wife about not getting eggs too many times a week. I do not believe that existing research makes it out to be bad – but I think it is not impossible that, in the future, you may find out otherwise?
Obviously, on this topic as on many others it’s a very personal decision! I certainly don’t think that it is wrong for others to decide to eat eggs daily. I don’t though.
Btw, I have the same problem as your husband (family history) – my cholesterol levels are great because of our family diet but I pay very careful attention to it. I do what he does (fiber etc.) and it works very well for me too!
yeah, I guess the drawback is the assumption that not eating a food has no downsides. For toddlers, their brains are still myelinating – they need fat. Kids who eat very very low fat diets often have issues with neurodevelopment. Also a choice to NOT eat one food means you either eat fewer calories overall (not ideal for a growing kiddo) OR you are supplementing those calories with something else – whose nutritional and health benefits are also equivocal or unknown.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm where we had our own pigs, cows, chickens, garden, etc., so we ate “natural” every day. We ate eggs a LOT…I can’t say every day especially during the school year, but during the summer we pretty much did. I’m 45 and I’m fine…last checked I did have elevated cholesterol, but I attribute that more to the foods I LOVE to eat now (fried chicken, etc.,) But who knows…maybe those childhood eggs were the culprit.
Also, @Michel, I’m asking for the same reason that you have with @Kaelan. With the exception of breakfast, his BG’s stay at, or under 200 post-prandial…his breakfast meals, though, no matter how healthy seem to cause spikes sometimes up to, and over 300. So we are trying to make this one meal less carb heavy than the other meals of the day to prevent these morning time spikes.
In our case, we are still eating eggs, just not every day. My son has real eggs once to twice per week, and egg whites 4-5 times a week.
It’s so hard to figure out cause and effect though. Could well be genetic for you, as it likely is for @TiaG’s husband and me.
That was a great link!!
Your two cents is worth a $million!
Re: cholesterol, I lucked genetically, so my cholesterol has always been pretty good/stable regardless of diet, with the exception of my triglycerides, which were way elevated for a while. Getting tighter glucose control, which involved going lower carb/higher fat (including eggs, cheese, red meats, all the things commonly seen as problematic for lipids), was the only thing that made a difference, and now my triglycerides are finally well into the low range. Even for someone without other risk factors, hyperglycemia increases triglyceride levels, and that’s one of the riskier things to have elevated. So I’d suspect that whatever dietary changes you need to make to maintain good glucose control probably outweigh the possibility that the current science is wrong re: eggs, especially for otherwise healthy and young diabetes. Also, the current more conventional science (vs newer findings that are pro-LCHF) implicates saturated fats far more than dietary cholesterol, so probably fatty red meat and dairy fat would be as much if not more of a concern from that perspective than eggs.
An egg a day keeps the doctor away…
...if you aim it well enough :-)
(courtesy Winston Churchill)