How would your body react if you ate 720 eggs in 28 days? A doctoral student at Harvard University decided to undertake this seemingly bonkers experiment to track changes in his blood cholesterol levels. During the “eggsperiment,” he ate only twice a day: from 10 to 11 in the morning and then around 6 in the evening. Each meal consisted of 12 eggs. After the experiment, the level of low-density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol) in his body decreased by a whopping 20%, which in turn disproves the common belief that eating eggs leads to an increase in cholesterol.
Cholesterol is an organic fatty substance necessary for normal metabolism, and almost 80% of it is produced in the liver. Recent studies show that eating eggs if you are otherwise healthy, does not bump up your cholesterol levels or make you more prone to getting heart disease. For example, earlier this year, experts at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina, found that people who ate 12 eggs a week had the same cholesterol levels after four months as those who ate fewer than two.
LDL (low-density lipoprotein) can build up as plaque and clog the arteries, which is why it’s considered the bad kind of cholesterol. Naturally, treating all that nasty plaque seriously increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. The liver is the primary source of cholesterol, but foods like eggs also contain it. The yolk contains all 186 mg of a large egg.