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Hello, brain health ambassadors. If you’ve been reading along on BHK this summer, you know we’ve been talking about some rather controversial foods. Last time, we looked into a new meat study that made a lot of sensational headlines. Claims that eating more meat could reduce Alzheimer’s risk in some people circulated like crazy on social media and online. Is steak the new brain-healthy food? Not exactly. The truth, we found, fell somewhere between what we previously thought about eating meat and those hyperbolic headlines.

Today we are shining our brain health lens on another controversial food: eggs. Few foods have experienced a bigger public relations roller coaster than eggs! They’ve gone from being considered a food to avoid to one that may actually be good for you. But do they deserve the status of brain food? A new study out of Rush University looked at how eggs may influence the chance of developing Alzheimer’s. Should we all be eating more eggs? As always, the devil is in the details.

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This classic 1980’s Time magazine cover sums up the the era’s vilification of eggs.

If you grew up in the sixties and seventies, you may remember that eggs were served for breakfast almost every day. Then, starting in the 1970’s, the fear of dietary cholesterol gave them the nickname “heart attack on a plate.” Americans switched to Egg Beaters, cereal, and yolk-free omelets. Once we entered the fat-free era in the 1980’s, eggs had fallen dramatically out of favor as a staple food.

Amazingly, what happened next was driven by solid science. Researchers determined that the cholesterol in food did not raise cholesterol levels in the blood in most people. The actual culprit was saturated fat. Cutting back on saturated and trans fats in the diet was found to lower harmful blood fats (especially LDL cholesterol and triglycerides) in most.

That was only part of the story. Not everyone could eat eggs freely without having a negative impact on cholesterol. Fifteen percent of people were found to be “hyperresponders.” These are the people who are sensitive to dietary cholesterol in foods, not just eggs but also shrimp, meat, cheese, butter, and other dairy products.

Even though eggs had been somewhat exonerated as an artery clogging food, the scientific data was still mixed. Some studies showed health benefits from eating eggs, others still pointed to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

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The Breakfast Salad with Crispy Potatoes, Smoked Salmon, and Jammy Eggs from **my book.** Photograph by Alexandra Grablewski.

Once the relationship between eggs and cardiovascular disease risk was more clear, researchers started looking at eggs through the brain health lens. By 2010, we already knew that what’s good for the heart is also good for the brain. If eggs didn’t raise cholesterol (in most people), could they be considered part of a brain-healthy diet?

When the MIND diet study was published in 2015, eggs were conspicuously absent from the list of ten brain-healthy foods and five foods to avoid. That study, as you may recall, showed that following these guidelines could possibly reduce the chance of developing Alzheimer’s by 53%. Those who followed the MIND diet most closely enjoyed brains that performed 7.5 years younger, and were more likely to age dementia-free.

Back in 2016 when I asked the lead MIND researcher Dr. Martha Claire Morris why eggs weren’t included, she told me she couldn’t touch eggs with a ten-foot pole. The data was just too inconsistent.

The last ten years has brought a handful of solid studies that put egg-eating in a more brain-healthy light. In fact, by the time I was writing my book around 2020 to 2023, I was swayed to the pro-egg side by several key positive findings published in medical journals. Based on this data, I opted to put eggs back on the brain health pyramid as a food to enjoy in moderation, with caveats for those who may be hyperresponders.

The BHK Guidelines frame eggs as part of a brain-healthy diet, but the amount is best individualized.

This 2021 study of more than 100,000 postmenopausal women looked at the health outcomes of varying sources of protein in the diet. While consuming plant protein was mostly associated with lower mortality from cancer, dementia, and heart disease, eating eggs was an outlier. Egg consumption was linked to a reduced risk of dying from dementia.
This 2021 study followed the egg-eating habits and outcomes of about 2500 dementia-free men for more than 20 years. Egg intake was not associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia. Instead, those who ate eggs several times a week tended to perform better on neuropsychological tests, especially those that require sharp frontal lobe and executive functioning.

Fast forward to 2024, and Dr. Morris’ colleagues at Rush University published an impressive Alzheimer’s/egg study of nearly 40,00 adults with more than 15 years of follow-up. They compared the cognitive health outcomes of people who have eaten eggs never, occasionally, weekly, or almost daily. They looked two outcomes: having Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain (a marker for perhaps an early stage of the disease) and developing Alzheimer’s clinically.

Here’s what they found:

Higher egg intake associated with a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s clinically. The sweet spot appeared to be several eggs each week, with the greatest benefit seen among people eating five or more eggs weekly.

Eating 2 or more eggs per week (in purple) was linked to being free from Alzheimer’s over time. Source: Pan et al, 2024.

When they looked at the probability of being free of Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain, the link was even stronger. The more eggs consumed (up to about 5 eggs a week), the less likely one had evidence of amyloid plaques and tau tangles (the typical signs of Alzheimer’s).

As egg intake when up (to 2 or more a week), brain pathology was less likely. Source: Pan et al, 2024.

Since this study is observational, it can’t prove that eating eggs reduces Alzheimer’s disease. The strength of the study, however, is how it brings to light a strong association between eating eggs and better brain health metrics. The authors point out that the unique nutrient composition of eggs may very well be protecting the brain. In fact, they estimated that approximately 39% of the observed association could be statistically explained by dietary choline.

This is the study that put eggs back in the headlines this year. It’s currently the largest prospective study specifically examining egg intake and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers followed almost 40,000 adults for 15 years. When they compared occasional egg eaters with people who never ate eggs, they found an inverse relationship between the number of eggs eaten each week and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Risk declined as intake increased, up to about five eggs per week. Headlines from major news outlets trumpeted some version of: “Research Shows Eating Eggs 5 Times a Week Could Cut Alzheimer’s Risk by 27%.”

It’s important to note that the population studied—the Seventh-day Adventists—is a famously healthy cohort. The Adventist community in Loma Linda, California, is the only officially designated Blue Zone in the U.S. Members of this religious group are mostly vegetarian, have low rates of smoking and alcohol use, and live about 10 years longer than the average American.

It’s intriguing that egg consumption in this group was associated with lower rates of Alzheimer’s—up to 27% lower compared with never eating eggs. But what most people didn’t glean from the study is this: when eggs were swapped out for other food groups, namely nuts and beans, the reduction in risk was essentially the same, serving for serving. In other words, the apparent benefit wasn’t unique to eggs. Most nutrition experts and epidemiologists remain highly skeptical of these results, as am I.

Gently poaching eggs is a brain-friendly cooking method that preserves their delicate fats and nutrietns. The bell pepper and chicken sausage recipe from **my book.** Photograph by Alexandra Grablewski.

The strongest evidence for eating eggs for your brain comes from the Rush study; participants who consumed eggs regularly were not only less likely to develop Alzheimer’s, their brains also had less Alzheimer’s pathology at autopsy.

But if there’s one lesson I’ve learned from decades of nutrition research, it’s this: there’s never been one food proven to single-handedly prevent Alzheimer’s. The science consistently supports focusing on dietary pattern over individual foods. Eggs may contribute choline, lutein, high-quality protein, and other nutrients that support brain health, but they work best alongside vegetables, beans, olive oil, nuts, seafood, whole grains, and regular physical activity.

Eating eggs—with caveats for those who may be hyperresponders—can be part of a brain-healthy diet for most people. How you cook eggs matters, too. Crank up the heat and they can become less than brain-healthy. I’ll get into that next time with some guidelines on how to shop for, prepare, and enjoy eggs.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you include eggs in your brain-healthy diet? Have you found that eating eggs makes it more difficult to keep harmful cholesterol down to target levels? Do you have questions about buying and eating eggs?

Eggs and Alzheimer's: Separating the Evidence from the Hype

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