Can You Lower Your LDL Without Cutting Eggs?

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]If saturated fat matters more than dietary cholesterol, what does that actually look like on your plate? Here are five practical ways to put things into action and lower your LDL. Number one, replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat and choose foods that have higher polyunsaturated to saturated fat ratios. In practical terms, this means using canola oil or soybean oil in place of butter and coconut oil, choosing soy foods and fatty fish over chicken, pork, and especially beef, and using unsweetened soy milk in place of dairy milk. Nuts and seeds are also great additions to add healthy fats to your diet. Number two, if your cholesterol levels are well managed, moderate egg consumption, that is one egg per day, does not need to be eliminated. Eggs are extremely nutrient-dense and provide high-quality protein, vitamin D, vitamin B12, iodine, selenium, and carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which are beneficial for eye health and also brain health. Number three, what you eat with eggs is important. Eggs that are stir-fried with bitter gourd in healthy canola oil will impact your cholesterol differently than if you eat the same eggs cooked in butter together with bacon. Number four, always ask the important nutrition question of compared to what? If you're already following a heart-healthy diet such as the portfolio diet and would still like to reduce your LDL by another 10 mg per deciliter, then removing high dietary cholesterol foods like eggs and shellfish could help you achieve that goal. And number five, there is a small percentage of people who are called hyperabsorbers, whose bodies absorb more dietary cholesterol than the average person. If you have stubborn LDL levels and suspect that you belong to this category, try an experiment by taking high cholesterol foods such as eggs and shellfish off of your diet for a couple of months and retest your cholesterol levels. If your LDL cholesterol comes down by 20 mg per deciliter or more, you might be a hyperabsorber and unfortunately, you'll need to be more careful with your dietary cholesterol intake.