I eat lots of eggs.Eggs have cholesterol.The truth is cholesterol is good for your brain. In fact, your brain makes cholesterol. So it makes sense that eggs can be good for the brain. There’s another reason eggs may be surprisingly good for you.There are many who are avoiding eating eggs, particularly the best part – the yolks. Eggs contain cholesterol. That’s why people think they’re bad for them. They think they will have a heart attack if they eat one!Egg yolks are the major food source of the essential nutrient choline. And maintaining optimal choline intake is crucial for brain function. Just last month a study published in the prestigious British Journal of Nutrition underlined this fact.
The study comes out of the Department of Nutrition at the University of Oslo in Norway. The authors looked at 2,195 men and women 70-74 years old. First, they evaluated the participants’ brain function using a series of three cognitive tests. Then they measured the amount of free choline in their blood (plasma).
They found that there was a particular level of choline that correlated with better scores. That level was over 8.4 μmol/l. Lower levels than this appeared to cause lower scores.
2003-4 National Health and Nutrition Survey found that the older a person gets, the less choline they get in their diet. So much so that adults over 71 and older eat an average of only 264 mg per day. This is barely half of what they need.
One egg typically has about 125 mg of choline. The only other really good source for choline is meats. But let me please be fair to my vegan or otherwise anti-egg friends. There are other sources of choline than eggs. You can get the same amount of choline found in a single egg from 3rd cups of nonfat milk or 3rd ounces of wheat germ.
Zeisel, S.H. and K. da Costa. “Choline: An Essential Nutrient for Public Health,”
Comments on this entry are closed.