Going to work on an egg may be good for you after all.

Fears that eating one egg a day will lead to high cholesterol and heart disease were challenged yesterday by scientific research.

It seems that there is no reason after all for healthy people to limit egg consumption to three a week — even though nearly half of British people believe that this is the maximum recommended number.

A paper to be published soon in the British Nutrition Foundation's Nutrition Bulletin has found that cholesterol in eggs has only a small and clinically insignificant effect on blood cholesterol. While people with high blood cholesterol are at increased risk of heart disease, only a third of the cholesterol in the body is attributed to diet.

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Other factors linked to high cholesterol levels are smoking, being overweight and lack of exercise, and the main culprit from food is saturated fat, not cholesterol found in eggs.

There was some scepticism about the findings when it was confirmed that Juliet Gray, a public health nutritionist, was funded by the egg industry for her research time. The co-author Bruce Griffin, a professor of nutritional metabolism at the University of Surrey, did not receive payment, though in the past he has advised the British Egg Industry Council on scientific issues.

However, it also emerged yesterday that the British Heart Foundation (BHF) revised its advice on egg consumption two years ago and no longer suggests a maximum of three eggs a week.

This advice is in line with guidance from the Food Standards Agency, which also says that most people have no reason to worry about the number of eggs they eat a week — though anyone who has inherited a genetic susceptibility to high blood cholesterol linked to increased risk of coronary heart disease, about one in 500 people in Britain, is still advised to stick to two or at most three eggs a week.

The study concludes that health chiefs and GPs should demolish the myths about eggs and heart disease and communicate a message that there is no need to limit the number eaten as long as they are part of a healthy low saturated fat diet.

Professor Griffin said: “The ingrained misconception linking egg consumption to high blood cholesterol and heart disease must be corrected.

“The amount of saturated fat in our diet exerts an effect on blood cholesterol that is several times greater than the relatively small amounts of dietary cholesterol.

“The UK public does not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat.”

Victoria Taylor, senior dietician at the BHF, confirmed that it no longer recommends a maximum consumption of two, three or four eggs a week.

She said: “We recommend that eggs can be eaten as part of a balanced diet. There is cholesterol present in eggs but this does not usually make a great contribution to your level of blood cholesterol.

“If you need to reduce your blood cholesterol level it is more important that you cut down on the amount of saturated fat in your diet from foods like fatty meat, full fat dairy products, cakes, biscuits and pastries.”

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