A Harvard medical student recently completed an intriguing “eggxperiment” by eating a total of 720 chicken eggs over 28 days to test their effect on his bad cholesterol.

Eggs have long had a bad reputation for raising LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or ‘bad’ cholesterol, and even though that perception of the protein-rich food has changed in recent years, many health experts still warn that eggs should be consumed in moderation. However, the results of a recent experiment are bound to once again spark a heated debate around the effects of consuming eggs on a daily basis. Nick Horowitz, a Harvard medical student with a PhD in metabolic health, set out on an extreme experiment to find out what the effects of eating an egg every hour for 28 straight days would have on his health. Not only did he survive the challenge, but the results of his tests during the unusual diet were surprising, to say the least.

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“The purpose of this whole experiment was a metabolic demonstration to discuss the ‘levers’ that can affect cholesterol in different individuals,” Horowitz told Fox News. “I expected my cholesterol levels not to change by just adding the eggs — and that is indeed what happened.”

Eating 60 dozen eggs in a single month is no joke, but the 25-year-old medical student was more than happy to put his own health on the line to spark a conversation about the true effect of eggs in our diet. He hypothesized that the egg-rich diet would not have a negative effect on his LDL levels, but it turned out that adding carbs after a ketogenic diet can actually lower the “bad” cholesterol.

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Nick’s LDL levels were around 90mg per decimeter when he was on a mixed, standard American-style diet, prior to switching to Keto, and they dropped by two percent in the first two weeks of his eggxperiment, before dropping by another 18 percent in the following two weeks, after adding carbohydrates to his daily diet.

“Eggs are a pretty versatile food, so making them in different ways made for a pretty pleasant experiment — it wasn’t that difficult,” the medical student said, adding that he ate them scrambled, fried, omelets, and deviled.

 

Although Nick Horowitz results are surprising, considering he ate an insane amount of eggs, he says the experiment only shows that there is no such thing as a “best diet. “When evaluating what is a good diet for a person, you need to consider their baseline metabolic health, and also what their goals are,” the 25-year-old said.