Eggs are Not OK

Eggs and Nutrition

The nutritional benefits of eggs is highlighted in the Australian Eggs’ OK Everyday campaign. Just how accurate is the assertion that,

According to Australian Egg website,

One cup (250 ml) of cooked kale contains more than 90 times the amount of lutein and zeaxanthin in one egg and one 5 g Brazil nut kernel contains 6 times more the amount of selenium in one egg.

One cup of kale contains 50% more iron. Both iron, lutein and zeaxanthin are more effective when consumed with vitamin C. Eggs do not contain vitamin C.

One egg contains approximately the same amount of selenium as 1 brazil nut, a serving of brown rice, cooked mushrooms, oatmeal poridge, spinach or baked beans (haricot or navy beans).

Choline is a nutrient found is eggs, that is frequently claimed as a health benefit. Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is produced by bacteria in the intestines from choline found in eggs. TMAO is implicated in a number of detrimental outcomes, including impaired renal function, colorectal cancer, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). ¹

CSIRO and the Healthy Diet Survey

Australians’ usual egg consumption is a document prepared by researchers at the CSIRO. The CSIRO is the premier Australian government-funded research organisation. ²

The conclusion of this document states:

This document is a marketing document. It needs a lot of imagination to make such a conclusion from the CSIRO’s published research papers. This conclusion also contradicts a number of other studies that show consuming eggs is detrimental.

I sent an email on 28^th October 2017 to the lead author of this document, Dr Gilly Hendrie. Hendrie is also the lead author of a number of journal articles relating to the Healthy Diet Index. A copy of this email can be found at CSIRO Healthy Diet Score and Egg Consumption in Australia.

The response will be published when it is received.

The CSIRO Healthy Diet Score survey was developed by CSIRO and the University of South Australia. The Healthy Diet Score collates self-reported dietary intakes. ^{3 4}

The survey is based on 38 questions designed to determine how well self-reported dietary intakes reflect compliance to Australian Dietary Guidelines.

First major issue is that self-reported dietary intakes a notoriously unreliable. There was no validation to test if the self-reported dietary intakes match the actual intakes.

Second major issue is that the CSIRO’s test for validity simply compared self-reported surveys. The claim that the “validity analysis showed moderate correlation between SFS#1 [Short Food Survey #1] and 24-hour recalls (ICC = 0.43 [. . .]).” is misleading.

According to the paper,

A 43% correlation is not a moderate correlation—stating that it is even a fair correlation is somewhat optimistic. Note that the average difference was 13 points with that range of differences being -20 to 43 out of a possible score of 100. Deriving consistent results from the Healthy Diet Score survey is obviously difficult.

The only health outcome that is recorded in the Health Diet Score is the weight status which is based on the BMI. The weight status can be one of the following: underweight; normal weight, overweight, obese.

The third major issue is that the survey does not address the only question that really counts—that is, which food intakes are correlated to healthy outcomes.

The Healthy Diet Survey was used to justify the “Eggs are OK every day” campaign. ⁵

This is despite the fact that, at the most optimistic, we can only state that there is a fair correlation between two different self-reported dietary survey and despite the fact that the Health Diet Score only measures compliance to dietary guidelines and not actual health outcomes.

Daily egg consumption compared with average HDS

The justification for “Eggs are OK everyday”, is that the as the egg consumption increases, so does the Healthy Diet Score. However, the Healthy Diet Score has not been shown to be associated with an increase in health outcomes. Consider how minor the differences are in the HDS, especially given that the average discrepancy was 12.7 points between two self-reported surveys one week apart.

If the weight status is compared with the egg consumption and Healthy Diet Score, a different observation is shown.

The mean egg consumption and mean HDS compared with weight status.
The standard deviation is shown in brackets.

There is an increase in body weight as the number of eggs consumed increases and a decrease in the mean of the Healthy Diet Score. This clearly contradicts the observation that egg consumption is associated with an increase in healthy outcomes.

There are a number of dietary indices that attempt to measure the quality of dietary intake. A number of different versions exists for most of these indices. Examples include:

A challenging problem is to determine how accurately these indices reflect healthy outcomes.

The Healthy Diet Score’s discretionary food items consists of alcohol, cakes and biscuits, chocolate and confectionery, fried potato products, ice-cream, muesli and snack bars, processed meat and products, savoury pies and pastries, savoury snacks, sugar sweetened beverages and takeaway foods. These items have no nutritional value and are not beneficial. A person is allocated zero points or 20 points for this category.

Below are three examples where a choice of two food items generate the same number of points. Do the two choices create the same health outcomes?

Seventh-day Adventist Health Studies

Dairy, meat, fish, poultry are given positive ratings in the Health Diet Score despite Seventh-day Adventists’ studies consistently showing an improvement in health status as the diet becomes more vegan. ⁶ The Odds Ratio in the following table relates to Type 2 diabetes.

(*) After adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, physical activity, television watching, sleep habits, alcohol use and BMI

These figures are after adjustment for BMI, physical activity and television watching which are not independent variables.

Note that the comparisons are with Californian Adventists who are much healthier that the average Californian who are also much healthier than the average American.

The life expectancies of vegan Californian Adventist men and women are higher than those of any population studied. ⁷

The Physicians’ Health Study

The Physicians’ Health Study commenced in 1981. As well as examining the role of aspirin and a beta-carotene supplement, on heart disease and cancer, it also examined the role of egg consumption on health. The result from a 20-year follow-up showed a significant correlation between egg consumption and all-cause mortality. A key finding is that physicians consuming 7 or more eggs per week had a 31% increase in all-cause mortality compared with those consuming less than 1 egg per week. For diabetic physicians, the association was much higher with the increase in mortality slightly more than doubled. ⁸

A British study reported a 2.7 times greater risk of cardiac deaths for those consuming 6 or more eggs per week. ⁹

Benefits of Two Eggs per Day

Astrup claims that,

A 2018 paper “Egg consumption, cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes”, is referenced to support this claim. This paper was co-authored by Astrup. ¹⁰

The conclusion of this 2018 paper, is:

Based on the above observations, the recommendation for “one egg a day” is not justified.

The DIABEGG Study

DIABEGG is an Australian study that compared the effects of a high-egg diet with a low-egg diet over a 12 month period.

The high-egg diet participants consumed 2 eggs/day for six days a week with the low-egg diet consuming 2 egg/week for breakfast.

Adding additional high protein foods invalidates the results. Removing these foods would have resulted in much more favourable markers for the low-egg diet.

There were no significant differences in fasting serum concentrations of LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, triglycerides, or inflammation markers between the 2 groups from start of the weight-loss intervention at 3 months to the end of the study at 12 months.

Similarly, there were no significant differences in waist circumference, total body fat, fat-free mass, radial pulse rate or systolic blood pressure at the end of the study.

After 12 months on two equally unhealthy, high-protein, high-fat, high-animal based diets, the participants from both groups were still overweight and unhealthy.

After 12 months on their 2 egg / day diet, resulted in the following change.

The C-Reactive Protein inflammation marker rose from its already elevated average as did the elevated HbA1c diabetes marker. The other changes are negligible.

It certainly does not warrant Astrup’s claim that,

Are Eggs Healthy?

Related articles

Eggs are Not OK
Worried about whether you should be eating eggs?
Eye Cataracts and Diet
Eggs and the Questionable Benefits of Choline
CSIRO Healthy Diet Score and Egg Consumption in Australia
Academy of Achievement Address 2006 by Professor Michael Brown
Egg Consumption, B12, Lutein and Zeaxanthin
Vitamin B12, Homocysteine and Methylmalonic Acid

Last updated on Friday 10 April 2026 at 15:23 by administrators

1. Gatarek, P. & Kaluzna-Czaplinska, J. (2021) Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) in human health. EXCLI journal. 20301–319.
2. Hendrie, G., Baird, D., & Noakes, M. (2016, October). Australians’ usual egg consumption. CSIRO Publications.
3. Hendrie, G., Baird, D., Golley, S., & Noakes, M. (2016, September). CSIRO Healthy Diet Score 2016.
4. Hendrie, G. A., Rebuli, M. A., & Golley, R. K. (2017). Reliability and relative validity of a diet index score for adults derived from a self‐reported short food survey. Nutrition & Dietetics, 74(3), 291–297.
5. Hendrie, G., Baird, D., & Noakes, M. (2016, October). Australians’ usual egg consumption. CSIRO Publications.
6. Le, L. & Sabate, J. (2014) Beyond Meatless, the Health Effects of Vegan Diets: Findings from the Adventist Cohorts. Nutrients. 6 (6), 2131–2147.
7. Fraser, G. E., & Shavlik, D. J. (2001). Ten Years of Life – Is It a Matter of Choice? Archives of Internal Medicine, 161(13), 1645–1652.
8. Djoussé, L. & Gaziano, J. M. (2008) Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians’ Health Study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 87 (4), 964–969.
9. Mann, J. I. et al. (1997) Dietary determinants of ischaemic heart disease in health conscious individuals. Heart. 78 (5), 450–455.
10. Geiker, N. R. W., Larsen, M. L., Dyerberg, J., Stender, S., & Astrup, A. (2018). Egg consumption, cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 72(1), 44–56