How Many Eggs a Day Is Safe to Eat: Amounts for Adults, Athletes and Weight Loss, What 3, 5 or 10 Eggs Do, Yolk Cholesterol and Quail Eggs

A healthy adult can eat one or two eggs a day. One egg a day is the best-studied amount: the largest meta-analysis on the subject, published in the BMJ in 2020, pooled data from 1.7 million people, and each additional egg a day didn't change the risk of heart disease. The American Heart Association calls one egg a day reasonable for healthy people, and Russia's National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine also names 1–2 eggs a day as normal for healthy adults. One large egg has 72 calories, 6.3 g of protein and 186 mg of cholesterol. Some national guidelines, including Russia's, still cap dietary cholesterol at 300 mg a day, the same number the US used until 2015, so at three eggs a day or more it makes sense to look at the whole plate and at your blood test. Below: what 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 eggs give you, how athletes and people losing weight should count eggs, how many quail eggs equal one chicken egg, and who should decide on egg numbers with a doctor.

How many eggs a day can an adult eat

A healthy adult can comfortably eat one or two eggs a day. That number rests on several large pieces of work, and each looks at the question from its own angle.

The big studies. Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier and colleagues in 2020 analyzed three US cohorts: 215,618 people followed for up to 32 years. People who ate an egg a day or more didn't get heart disease more often than those who ate eggs less than once a month. The authors then combined their data with other researchers' work and got 33 risk estimates covering 1,720,108 participants. Each additional egg a day didn't change the risk of cardiovascular disease: the relative risk was 0.98, and the difference was within chance. In Asian cohorts the link went the other way, and egg lovers had a slightly lower risk.

Cardiologists. In its 2020 science advisory (lead author Jo Ann Carson), the American Heart Association writes that in observational studies, cholesterol from food is generally not linked to heart disease. For healthy people, the AHA considers up to one whole egg a day reasonable, and for older adults with normal cholesterol up to two, as long as the rest of the diet is healthy. Vegetarians who eat eggs and dairy can have more, since they get no cholesterol from meat.

US guidelines. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans dropped a specific cholesterol cap in 2015. The AHA advisory explains that an exact limit in milligrams is hard to apply in practice for doctors and ordinary people alike, so advice about the overall diet works better.

Where the 300 mg cap still stands. Russia's federal nutrition norms (Rospotrebnadzor guidelines MR 2.3.1.0253-21) limit dietary cholesterol to 300 mg a day. A large egg has 186 mg, so the cap runs out at 1.6 eggs, and only if nothing else you eat contains cholesterol. At the same time, Russia's National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine, in a 2020 article, names 1–2 eggs daily as normal for healthy people. We use the 300 mg figure in the tables below as a conservative reference point.

The WHO. The WHO has no separate egg recommendation for adults. In its "Healthy diet" fact sheet, updated on January 26, 2026, eggs are named explicitly only in the diet of children aged 6 to 23 months. For adults, the WHO limits saturated fat to no more than 10% of daily calories and trans fat to no more than 1%. So if you hear "the WHO recommends one egg a day," you can let it pass: there's no such recommendation.

What this means in numbers. One egg a day has the strongest evidence behind it, and two is also in the range where large studies see no harm. For three or more there's little direct data: people who eat 3–4 eggs every day barely show up in these studies.

Women and men have the same egg range. The difference is only in total protein and calories. Russian norms put protein at 75–114 g a day for men and 60–90 g for women, so two eggs cover a slightly bigger share of a woman's daily protein.

What's in one egg: protein, cholesterol and choline

A large egg has about 72 calories, 6.3 g of protein and 186 mg of cholesterol. These numbers come from the USDA FoodData Central database for a 50 g (1.8 oz) egg without the shell, which is what USDA counts as one large egg. It also has about 4.8 g of fat, 1.6 g of it saturated, 1 mcg of vitamin D and 15 mcg of selenium.

The white and the yolk are built differently:

• White, about 33 g: 3.6 g of protein, 17 calories and 0 mg of cholesterol.
• Yolk, about 17 g: 2.7 g of protein, 55 calories, 184 mg of cholesterol, 139 mg of choline and 0.9 mcg of vitamin D.

Almost all of the cholesterol and almost all of the choline are in the yolk. The yolk also holds more than 40% of the egg's protein. If you throw out the yolks, you lose almost half the protein along with the cholesterol.

Choline. Russian norms set adult choline needs at 500 mg a day. One egg gives 147 mg, almost a third of that, and two eggs give 294 mg, more than half. According to MR 2.3.1.0253-21, lecithin, which contains choline, makes up 70% of the phospholipids in the yolk. We covered how choline from eggs is linked to memory and dementia risk in our article on eggs and Alzheimer's risk.

Egg size. In USDA FoodData Central, one egg without the shell weighs 38 g if it's small, 44 g medium, 50 g large, 56 g extra large and 63 g jumbo. Russia's standard GOST 31654-2012 grades single eggs by weight in the shell, from category 3 (35–44.9 g) to the top category (75 g and up); the full breakdown is in the questions at the end. Two jumbo eggs (126 g) weigh about as much as three small ones (114 g), so "two eggs for breakfast" can differ by almost half between two people. If you count calories and cholesterol, take a large egg as "one egg" and adjust for size.

What 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 eggs a day give you: a table

The more eggs you eat, the faster you hit the cholesterol cap, while protein and saturated fat still leave plenty of room. We calculated this table ourselves. The base is a large 50 g egg without the shell, with nutrients from USDA. Cholesterol is compared with the 300 mg daily cap, saturated fat with the WHO limit of 10% of calories (about 22 g on a 2,000-calorie diet), and choline with the 500 mg norm.

How to read the table:

• Cholesterol. Under a 300 mg cap, the "corridor" ends at 1.6 eggs, if nothing else you eat contains cholesterol. The AHA and the large meta-analyses don't treat this cap as strict, and US guidelines no longer have it. But if your LDL is high, 300 mg a day becomes a working limit, and your doctor may set it lower still: for people with raised cholesterol, the Russian National Medical Research Center for Preventive Medicine names 200 mg.
• Saturated fat. Even 5 eggs take up only a third of the WHO daily limit. The limit gets used up by bacon, sausage, butter and cheese, which usually sit next to the omelet.
• Protein. Three eggs give 18.8 g, a little below the 20 g per meal that the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) recommends as a lower bound in its 2017 position stand. Four eggs give 25 g, which is already inside the 20–40 g range.
• Leucine. This is the amino acid that switches on muscle protein building. The ISSN recommends 700–3,000 mg of leucine per meal, and two eggs with 1.09 g already fall into that range.

Do eggs raise your blood cholesterol?

For most people they raise it a little: on average, "bad" LDL cholesterol goes up by about 5.5 mg/dL (0.14 mmol/L), and "good" HDL goes up along with it.

A quick note on terms. LDL (low-density lipoprotein) is the "bad" cholesterol: when there's a lot of it, it builds up in artery walls. HDL (high-density lipoprotein) is the "good" kind: it carries excess cholesterol from the arteries back to the liver. Both show up on a lipid panel, the blood test for fats.

What the trials showed. Mohammad Hossein Rouhani and colleagues in 2018 pooled 28 randomized trials in which some people had eggs added to their diet and others didn't. Eggs raised LDL by an average of 5.55 mg/dL, which is about 0.14 mmol/L (our conversion). HDL rose by 2.13 mg/dL, about 0.06 mmol/L, and total cholesterol by 5.60 mg/dL. The LDL-to-HDL and total-to-HDL ratios didn't change, and neither did triglycerides. The authors found no dependence on how many eggs a day people ate or for how long.

What this means for you: if your LDL is 116 mg/dL (3.0 mmol/L), after adding eggs it would average about 121.5 mg/dL (3.14 mmol/L). For a healthy person with normal results, that's a small shift. For someone whose LDL is already above normal, an extra 5.5 mg/dL is a reason to talk about eggs with a doctor.

Why eggs don't raise cholesterol in everyone. Christopher Blesso and Maria Luz Fernandez write in a 2018 review that in roughly two thirds of people, blood cholesterol doesn't change from eggs or rises only slightly. In the rest it rises more noticeably, but usually both LDL and HDL go up, so the ratio between them stays almost the same. The reason is that your body makes most of its cholesterol itself. When more comes in with food, the body cuts its own production, absorbs less and excretes more. In some people this adjustment works almost completely, in others less so. The only way to find out which group you're in is a blood test.

The counterweight: a study in JAMA. Victor Zhong and colleagues in 2019 combined six US cohorts: 29,615 people, half of whom were followed for more than 17.5 years. Each additional 300 mg of dietary cholesterol a day was linked to a 17% higher risk of heart and blood vessel disease. Each additional half egg a day was linked to a 6% higher risk, and to an 8% higher risk of death from any cause. In absolute terms, half an egg a day meant about 1.1 extra cases of heart disease per 100 people over the whole follow-up. When the authors adjusted for total dietary cholesterol, the link with eggs specifically disappeared.

The practical takeaway: count all the cholesterol you eat in a day, meaning eggs, sausage, cheese, pastries and organ meats together.

What hurts your numbers most. Russia's MR 2.3.1.0253-21 states plainly that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol. In the three US cohorts from Drouin-Chartier's work, people who ate more eggs had a higher body mass index, ate more red meat and took statins less often. So when there's a problem, it usually comes from eggs fried in bacon fat with sausage on the side, and the eggs themselves are the smaller part of that plate.

How to test it on yourself. If you eat 3 eggs a day or more, get a lipid panel once a year. If your LDL is normal and doesn't climb from one test to the next, that number of eggs works for you.

Is it OK to eat 3, 4, 5 or 10 eggs a day?

Three eggs a day probably won't harm a healthy person if the rest of the diet is low in cholesterol and saturated fat. Ten eggs is more than a third of your daily calories and six times the 300 mg cholesterol cap.

There are no large studies on exactly 3, 4 or 5 eggs a day, only indirect data. In the 28 trials from Rouhani's 2018 review, the rise in blood cholesterol didn't depend on how many eggs a day people ate. So where do headlines like "scientists prove three eggs a day are good for you" come from? Small trials. For example, Diana DiMarco, Maria Luz Fernandez and colleagues in 2017 gave 38 healthy young people (average age 24) 1, 2 and 3 eggs a day, 4 weeks at each amount. Their "good" HDL went up and their "bad" LDL didn't. That's a good result, but it was found in young healthy people over 14 weeks: two weeks without eggs, then four weeks at each amount. The large studies with millions of participants barely reach those amounts: in the Drouin-Chartier cohorts, most people ate fewer than five eggs a week.

Here's the breakdown using the numbers from the table:

2 eggs a day is a normal breakfast portion: 143 calories, 12.6 g of protein and 372 mg of cholesterol. Large studies see no harm from this amount.

3 eggs a day means 215 calories, 18.8 g of protein and 558 mg of cholesterol, almost double the 300 mg cap. With normal blood work and no sausage or bacon alongside, this is most likely safe for a healthy person.

4 eggs a day means 286 calories, 25.1 g of protein and 744 mg of cholesterol. For protein, that's a full meal and a convenient post-workout breakfast, as long as the rest of the day's food is lean.

5 eggs a day means 358 calories, 31.4 g of protein, 930 mg of cholesterol (three times the cap) and 7.8 g of saturated fat, a third of the WHO limit. That's a lot of protein, but it still fits the ISSN range of 20–40 g per meal.

6 eggs a day means 429 calories, 37.7 g of protein and 1,116 mg of cholesterol, which is the top of the per-meal protein range. It makes more sense to split the eggs over two meals or swap some of the yolks for whites.

10 eggs a day means 715 calories, 62.8 g of protein, 1,860 mg of cholesterol and 15.7 g of saturated fat, 70% of the WHO limit before you add bread and butter. Some people eat like this when bulking to get protein, but it's easier to build that protein from cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, meat, fish and fewer eggs. If you want a lot of eggs, make most of them whites: 10 egg whites give about 36 g of protein, 170 calories and 0 mg of cholesterol.

The more eggs you eat in a day, the more two things matter: what's on the plate next to them and what your blood test shows.

How many eggs a week, and how many people actually eat

At one or two eggs a day you get 7–14 eggs a week, which is within the range the large studies looked at. In the three US cohorts from Drouin-Chartier's 2020 work, most people ate between one and five eggs a week.

What an official food basket looks like. Russia's Ministry of Health, in its 2016 recommendations on rational food consumption (Order No. 614), sets 260 eggs a year per person. That's 5 eggs a week, or 0.71 eggs a day (our calculation).

How many eggs people really eat. Russian poultry industry data, as reported by RIA Novosti, show consumption of 270 eggs per person a year in 2010, 279 in 2017, and 288 in both 2019 and 2022. That works out to about 0.8 eggs a day, or 5.5 a week, and some of those eggs come in unnoticed: in baking, pancakes, salads and sauces.

Hidden eggs. If you're counting cholesterol, these count too. Two eggs for breakfast plus a serving of pancakes where the whole batch used two eggs already add up to almost three.

How many eggs do athletes need, and how many for bulking

Athletes should count eggs as part of their daily protein: the ISSN recommends 1.4–2.0 g of protein per kilogram of body weight a day (about 0.64–0.91 g per pound) and 20–40 g per meal, and 4 eggs give you 25 g.

An example. At 80 kg (176 lb), you need 112–160 g of protein a day. If you eat four times a day, that's 28–40 g per meal. Four eggs give 25 g and almost cover one such meal, but not the whole day. You make up the rest with cottage cheese, meat, fish and legumes. We explain how to work out your own target in how much protein per day, and you can compare protein across other foods in our guide to choosing protein sources.

A few more guidelines from the 2017 ISSN position stand (lead author Ralf Jäger):

• protein per meal: 20–40 g, or about 0.25 g per kilogram of body weight;
• leucine in each meal: 700–3,000 mg;
• protein meals every 3–4 hours;
• on a cut, meaning a calorie deficit, 2.3–3.1 g of protein per kilogram (about 1.0–1.4 g per pound) to hold on to muscle.

On a cut it's handy to use more egg whites on their own: one white has 3.6 g of protein and only 17 calories.

Whole eggs or just whites. Stephan van Vliet and colleagues in 2017 gave 10 trained young men either whole eggs (18 g of protein and 17 g of fat) or egg whites with the same amount of protein and no fat after a resistance workout. Whole eggs switched on muscle protein synthesis more strongly. That's the process that lets muscles recover and grow. The study is small, but it certainly gives no reason to throw out yolks for the sake of your muscles.

Raw eggs are a bad idea. Pierre Evenepoel and colleagues in 1998 gave five patients with an ileostomy 25 g of egg protein, once cooked and once raw. An ileostomy is an opening where the end of the small intestine is brought out through the belly, so in these patients researchers can measure exactly how much protein was absorbed. From the cooked protein, 90.9% was absorbed in the small intestine; from the raw, 51.3%. The study is tiny, but the gap is big: by drinking raw eggs you get almost half the protein, and you add a risk of salmonella on top.

How to count without a calculator. Protein is easier to track in a food diary that shows calories, protein, fat and carbs for the day. The Sportygram app (go.sportygram.com) has one, with a barcode scanner, a database of about 101,000 products and a calorie target calculated in your profile. Keep in mind that its interface is currently in Russian only.

How many eggs can you eat to lose weight

A two-egg breakfast works well for weight loss, but only together with a calorie deficit.

Jillon Vander Wal and colleagues in 2008 took 152 people with excess weight. One group ate two eggs for breakfast at least 5 days a week (the whole breakfast was 340 calories), the other ate bagels with the same calories. For those who were also put on a 1,000-calorie daily deficit, eggs helped more: over 8 weeks they lost 2.63 kg (5.8 lb) versus 1.59 kg (3.5 lb), which is 65% more. Without a calorie deficit, there was no difference between eggs and bagels. Cholesterol and other blood fats didn't differ between the groups.

The DIABEGG trial in people with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes adds two details. In the first three months, those who ate 2 eggs 6 days a week felt less hungry and stayed full longer after breakfast than those who ate fewer than 2 eggs a week. In the 2018 follow-up, 128 participants lost weight on a calorie deficit for three months and were then followed for another six. From month 3 to month 12, both groups lost an average of 3.1 kg (6.8 lb), so the extra eggs made no difference to how fast people lost weight. Blood sugar, cholesterol and inflammation markers didn't differ between the groups.

What this means for you: the calorie deficit does the weight loss, and eggs make it easier to stick to. They're filling and high in protein, and one egg has only 72 calories.

How many eggs on a diet. Two or three eggs for breakfast (143–215 calories) fit well into a deficit if you count them in the day's calories. If you want a breakfast with 25–30 g of protein, add cottage cheese, Greek yogurt or a few egg whites. You'll find ideas in our roundup of high-protein breakfasts.

Boiled or fried. When you're losing weight, boiled eggs, poached eggs and omelets made in a nonstick pan without oil are the easiest choice: the calories stay the same as the egg itself. A fried egg adds the oil from the pan to the egg's own calories, and often bacon, sausage or mayonnaise as well. Those are what turn a light 150-calorie breakfast into a heavy one.

Quail eggs: how many a day, and how many equal one chicken egg

Five quail eggs match one chicken egg for protein and calories, but they have about twice as much cholesterol. One quail egg weighs about 9 g (0.3 oz) without the shell and has 14 calories, 1.2 g of protein and 76 mg of cholesterol. These numbers are calculated from USDA data.

The main point of the table. Per 100 g, quail eggs have 2.3 times more cholesterol than chicken eggs.

Popular claims. You'll often read that quail eggs have "5 times more potassium" and "4.4 times more iron." USDA data don't back this up. Potassium per 100 g is almost the same: 132 mg in quail eggs versus 138 mg in chicken eggs. Quail eggs do have more iron, but 2.1 times more: 3.65 mg versus 1.75 mg. They have even slightly less choline.

How many quail eggs a day. Count them by cholesterol: five quail eggs are like two chicken eggs, ten are like four. For a healthy person, 5 quail eggs a day fall into the same zone as 2 chicken eggs. If your LDL is high, quail eggs won't be a lighter option, since they have more cholesterol per gram. It's also better not to eat them raw. The WHO lists eggs among the main sources of salmonella, and only thorough cooking protects you from it.

Who should limit eggs and when to see a doctor

It's worth limiting eggs with high LDL, familial hypercholesterolemia and type 2 diabetes, and that decision is best made with a doctor based on your blood work.

High LDL. Russia's National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine advises people with raised cholesterol to eat no more than 2 yolks a week and get no more than 200 mg of cholesterol a day from food. That's a little more than one yolk. You don't need to limit egg whites, since they have no cholesterol. The AHA's 2020 advisory also recommends that people with lipid disorders, especially with diabetes or at risk of heart failure, be more careful with cholesterol-rich foods.

Familial hypercholesterolemia. This is an inherited condition in which LDL is high from a young age. Food is only part of the treatment here, and your doctor decides how many eggs you can eat as part of the overall plan.

Type 2 diabetes. The data point in different directions, so it's better to show all of them:

• Ying Rong and colleagues, in a 2013 meta-analysis (BMJ, 17 reports), found no link in the general population between an egg a day and coronary heart disease or stroke. Hemorrhagic stroke was even 25% less common among egg eaters. But among people with diabetes, those who ate the most eggs had a 54% higher risk of coronary heart disease than those who ate the fewest. This is observational data, and people who eat a lot of eggs may differ in other habits too.
• Drouin-Chartier and colleagues, in 2020 in the AJCN, combined 16 cohorts with 589,559 people. Overall, an egg a day wasn't linked to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes: the relative risk was 1.07, within chance. In US studies it was 1.18, in European studies 0.99, and in Asian studies 0.82. In the authors' own three US cohorts, each egg a day was linked to a 14% higher risk of diabetes. It may come down to what eggs are eaten with in the US, but there's no clear answer yet.
• In the randomized DIABEGG trial (Fuller, 2015 and 2018), 140 people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes were split into two groups. One ate 2 eggs 6 days a week, the other fewer than 2 eggs a week, and in both groups saturated fat in the diet was replaced with unsaturated fat. After 3 months, cholesterol and blood sugar didn't differ between groups, and after a year, inflammation markers didn't either.

The bottom line for diabetes: you can eat eggs, but agree on the amount with your endocrinologist and keep an eye on your lipid panel.

Raw eggs. The WHO's 2018 fact sheet on salmonella says people usually get infected through foods of animal origin, mainly eggs, meat, poultry and milk. Thorough cooking protects you, so eggnog made with raw eggs, raw eggs in a shake and soft-boiled eggs with runny whites carry a risk. Young children, older adults and people with weakened immunity have the hardest time with salmonella. These documents don't set a separate egg amount for pregnant women, and the cooking rule applies to them in full.

Allergy. If you get a rash, itching or swollen lips after eating eggs, that's a reason to see a doctor. If your face swells and it becomes hard to breathe, call emergency services.

See a doctor if:

• your LDL is above normal or keeps rising from one test to the next;
• someone in your family had an early heart attack or stroke;
• you have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes;
• you get a rash, itching, swelling or stomach pain after eggs;
• you eat 3 eggs a day or more and haven't had a lipid panel in over a year.

Questions and answers

The bottom line

• 1–2 eggs a day suit a healthy adult: in a meta-analysis of 1.7 million people, an extra egg a day didn't raise the risk of heart disease.
• One large egg has 72 calories, 6.3 g of protein and 186 mg of cholesterol. Almost all the cholesterol and choline are in the yolk, and so is more than 40% of the egg's protein.
• Eggs raise LDL by an average of 5.5 mg/dL (0.14 mmol/L), and "good" HDL rises with it. About two thirds of people barely react to the cholesterol in eggs.
• At 3 eggs a day or more, look at the whole plate and your lipid panel: a 300 mg cholesterol cap runs out at 1.6 eggs.
• Athletes should count eggs as protein: 4 eggs give 25 g per meal. Raw eggs are absorbed almost half as well as cooked ones.
• Five quail eggs equal one chicken egg for protein and two for cholesterol.
• With high LDL, familial hypercholesterolemia or type 2 diabetes, the number of eggs is chosen with a doctor based on your blood work.

Checklist: how many eggs are right for you

• No issues with cholesterol or blood sugar: eat 1–2 eggs a day without worry.
• Eating 3 eggs a day or more: get a lipid panel once a year.
• Count the eggs in baking, pancakes and salads: they add to the total.
• If you watch your cholesterol, skip the bacon and sausage next to your eggs and don't fry them in bacon fat.
• In your counts, take a large egg as "one egg" and count extra large and jumbo as bigger.
• Convert quail eggs to chicken eggs: 5 quail eggs equal one chicken egg for protein and two for cholesterol.
• Don't drink raw eggs: you absorb almost half as much protein, and the salmonella risk is real.
• With high LDL, type 2 diabetes or familial hypercholesterolemia, agree on your egg amount with a doctor.

Sources

1. Drouin-Chartier J.-P. et al. Egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: three large prospective US cohort studies, systematic review, and updated meta-analysis. BMJ, 2020. — 215,618 people followed for up to 32 years: an egg a day or more didn't raise the risk of heart disease; in the meta-analysis of 1,720,108 participants, each egg a day had a relative risk of 0.98; in Asian cohorts the link was inverse; in the three US cohorts most people ate 1 to 5 eggs a week, and egg lovers had a higher BMI and ate more red meat.
2. Zhong V. W. et al. Associations of Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Consumption With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality. JAMA, 2019. — 29,615 people, median follow-up 17.5 years: +300 mg of cholesterol a day meant 17% higher heart disease risk, +half an egg a day meant 6% higher; after adjusting for dietary cholesterol, the link with eggs disappeared.
3. Carson J. A. S. et al. Dietary Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Risk: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association. Circulation, 2020. — Dietary cholesterol is generally not linked to heart disease in observational studies; an exact milligram limit is hard to apply, and diet-pattern advice works better; up to one egg a day for healthy people and up to two for older adults with normal cholesterol; caution with lipid disorders.
4. Rong Y. et al. Egg consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. BMJ, 2013. — Up to one egg a day wasn't linked to coronary heart disease or stroke; in people with diabetes, more eggs meant higher coronary risk, relative risk 1.54.
5. Drouin-Chartier J.-P. et al. Egg consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: findings from 3 large US cohort studies of men and women and a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohorts. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2020. — 16 cohorts, 589,559 people: an egg a day overall wasn't linked to type 2 diabetes (1.07); US 1.18, Europe 0.99, Asia 0.82; in the authors' three cohorts, +1 egg a day meant 14% higher risk.
6. Fuller N. R. et al. The effect of a high-egg diet on cardiovascular risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes: the DIABEGG study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015; **12-month follow-up**, 2018. — 140 people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, 2 eggs 6 days a week versus fewer than 2 a week: lipids and blood sugar didn't differ, less hunger after breakfast; in the follow-up, 128 people lost the same 3.1 kg from month 3 to month 12, with no difference in inflammation markers.
7. Rouhani M. H. et al. Effects of Egg Consumption on Blood Lipids: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2018. — 28 trials: LDL +5.55 mg/dL, HDL +2.13 mg/dL, ratios and triglycerides unchanged, no dependence on the number of eggs.
8. Blesso C. N., Fernandez M. L. Dietary Cholesterol, Serum Lipids, and Heart Disease: Are Eggs Working for or Against You? Nutrients, 2018. — About two thirds of people barely respond to egg cholesterol; in the rest, both LDL and HDL rise.
9. DiMarco D. M. et al. Intake of up to 3 Eggs/Day Increases HDL Cholesterol and Plasma Choline While Plasma Trimethylamine-N-oxide is Unchanged in a Healthy Population. Lipids, 2017. — 38 healthy young people, 1, 2 and 3 eggs a day for 4 weeks each: HDL rose, LDL didn't, and the LDL-to-HDL ratio fell.
10. Jäger R. et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017. — 1.4–2.0 g of protein per kg a day, 20–40 g per meal, 700–3,000 mg of leucine, meals every 3–4 hours, 2.3–3.1 g/kg in a deficit.
11. van Vliet S. et al. Consumption of whole eggs promotes greater stimulation of postexercise muscle protein synthesis than consumption of isonitrogenous amounts of egg whites in young men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2017. — After resistance training, whole eggs stimulated muscle protein synthesis more than egg whites with the same protein.
12. Evenepoel P. et al. Digestibility of cooked and raw egg protein in humans as assessed by stable isotope techniques. Journal of Nutrition, 1998. — Five patients with an ileostomy, 25 g of egg protein: 90.9% absorbed when cooked, 51.3% when raw.
13. Vander Wal J. S. et al. Egg breakfast enhances weight loss. International Journal of Obesity, 2008. — 152 people, 8 weeks on a 1,000-calorie deficit: a two-egg breakfast meant −2.63 kg versus −1.59 kg with bagels; no difference without a deficit.
14. Rospotrebnadzor. MR 2.3.1.0253-21 "Norms of physiological requirements for energy and nutrients for various population groups of the Russian Federation", 2021. — Dietary cholesterol no more than 300 mg a day, choline 500 mg, protein 75–114 g for men and 60–90 g for women, lecithin 70% of yolk phospholipids, saturated fat raises cholesterol. In Russian.
15. Ministry of Health of Russia. Order No. 614 of 19.08.2016 "On approval of recommendations on rational food consumption norms meeting modern healthy eating requirements". — 260 eggs a year per person. In Russian.
16. GOST 31654-2012 "Chicken eggs for food. Specifications". — Egg weight categories and shelf life of dietary and table eggs. In Russian.
17. WHO. Healthy diet — fact sheet, 2026. — Saturated fat no more than 10% of calories, trans fat no more than 1%; no separate egg recommendation for adults.
18. WHO. Salmonella (non-typhoidal) — fact sheet, 2018. — People are infected mainly through eggs, meat, poultry and milk; thorough cooking protects; young children, older adults and people with weakened immunity get sicker.
19. U.S. Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central: Egg, whole, raw, fresh; Egg, white, raw; Egg, yolk, raw; Egg, whole, hard-boiled; Egg, quail, whole, raw. — Nutrients in whole chicken egg, white, yolk, hard-boiled egg and quail egg, and portion weights; the tables in this article are calculated from these data.
20. Eganyan R. A., National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health of Russia. How many eggs can you eat?, 2020. — 1–2 eggs a day for healthy people; with raised cholesterol, up to 2 yolks a week and up to 200 mg of cholesterol a day. In Russian.
21. RIA Novosti citing the Russian Poultry Union. How many eggs Russians will eat in 2023, 2023. — Industry data: 270 eggs per person a year in 2010, 279 in 2017, 288 in 2019 and 2022. In Russian.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice.