Here’s something a lot of dieters might not know – some very credible experts on nutrition (a whole lot of them, in fact) are now saying that the “egg white” diet is not all it’s cracked up to be, and that declining the yolk of the egg is generally a mistake.

First, these professionals, and the studies they cite, trot out a surprisingly long list of health advantages found in the center of an egg. There’s choline, a protein that has been linked to inhibition of blood clotting. There are also compounds that help prevent macular degeneration, as well as Omega-3 fatty acids that help build a protein platform for cardio health. Then there are a long list of vitamins also nested in that hearty yellow yolk.

Also, these experts say, the wild alarm against “high cholesterol” in eggs is somewhat misleading. The body has two kinds of cholesterol: HDL and LDL. Basic guide books often call HDL “good” cholesterol and LDL “bad” cholesterol.

What egg advocates are saying is that, first of all, the body compensates for cholesterol intake such as that caused by eating egg yolks. Secondly, studies have shown that egg yolks can bring up the HDL number, causing the LDL number to actually go down!

These egg yolk fact-finding initiatives have us looking at past campaigns warning us that egg yolks were “so bad” for us. Remember the magazine covers with those high cholesterol eggs? Well, they were staring at us from a frying pan, along with a couple of strips of bacon. For those who are worried about eggs (or egg yolks in particular) doing a number on your heart: try not frying the eggs, but hard boiling them instead. And skip the side of bacon.

And what about those “Heart Healthy” egg white omelettes on the diner menu? If the yolk is the most nutritional part of the egg, why throw it out? The best explanation would be that an egg white diet is “playing it safe” – though the overall cholesterol or fat content may be greater when you eat the whole egg, the fact is that there really isn’t much of anything in the egg white at all. That’s here you can see that a lot of gimmick diets are just a way of getting people to eat less, and ingest less food value. However, we’ve shown time and time again that this is not the best way to look after your health.

So, instead of doing away with the yolk entirely, think about controlling the food value of your egg through buying natural, free range, organic eggs, with high Omega-3 content and rich, orange yolks. Do a little research, and you’ll see how the positives of a moderate whole egg diet can far outweigh the negatives.