Should you worry about the cholesterol in egg yolks?

Short answer

At about one a day, no. Eating more eggs nudges bad cholesterol up a little, but one egg a day was not linked to heart disease risk, and saturated fat had a bigger effect on cholesterol levels.

Should you worry about the cholesterol in egg yolks?
'Yolk → cholesterol up → heart disease' — does this formula hold?
Plenty of people eat lots of eggs for protein but throw away the yolks. The worry is that yolk cholesterol builds up in the arteries. We checked this formula one step at a time.
Do more eggs raise cholesterol?
They do, about like 100 becoming 108
An analysis that pooled 17 trials (3 to 12 weeks) of eating more eggs found bad cholesterol (LDL) was 8.14 higher on average. That is like 100 becoming 108. Another analysis of 28 studies found bad cholesterol rose 5.55 and good cholesterol (HDL) rose 2.13, so the ratio between them did not change.
So does heart disease go up?
1 egg a day was not linked to heart disease risk
Following 215,618 people for up to 32 years, people eating 1 or more eggs a day did not have a higher risk of heart and blood vessel disease. An analysis of 1.72 million people found 1 more egg a day was not linked to risk either, and in Asian studies the risk was actually slightly lower.
Were there opposite findings?
Yes, but the eggs themselves were not the issue
A study that followed 29,615 people for 17.5 years found each extra half egg a day came with a 6% higher risk of heart and blood vessel disease. But once total cholesterol from all foods was accounted for, the link with eggs disappeared. A 2025 review of 14 analyses also found no link between eggs and heart disease or death.
What moves cholesterol levels more?
Saturated fat, not yolks
In a 2025 trial where people rotated through three diets for 5 weeks each, bad cholesterol rose with saturated fat intake and had no link to the amount of cholesterol in food. A diet with eggs every day but less saturated fat lowered bad cholesterol compared with a high saturated fat diet with almost no eggs.
For muscle, do you lose out by tossing the yolk?
Whole eggs drew a bigger muscle response than whites
When 10 people ate the same 18 g of protein as whole eggs or as egg whites, muscle protein building was higher with whole eggs. In a 12-week trial, 30 people ate 3 whole eggs or 6 egg whites after training: muscle mass did not differ, but strength and body fat percentage improved more with whole eggs.
Bottom line: no need to toss the yolk
1 egg a day was not linked to heart disease risk
More eggs raise bad cholesterol a little, but 1 egg a day was not linked to heart and blood vessel disease. If cholesterol is a concern, cutting saturated fat like fatty meat and butter did more than cutting yolks. For muscle, whole eggs were no worse than whites.