Eggs!

3 Pages 707 Words

March 29, 2002 -- The simple egg isn't the hard-boiled nemesis it used to be. Bedeviled by years of bad press, the egg's reputation has finally turned for the better. Amazing it didn't crack under the pressure. But here's the reality this Easter weekend -- all those pretty eggs are piling up. Is it safe to eat them?


"Eggs are back," says Donald J. McNamara, PhD, executive director of the Egg Nutrition Center in Washington, D.C. "They're not the bad guys we used to think they were."


Thirty years ago, eggs were virtually banned from the American diet because of their cholesterol content.


Cholesterol does play a role in heart disease -- "but today, we know that the cholesterol in eggs plays a very minor role," McNamara tells WebMD. "It's saturated fat in the diet that has the biggest impact" -- that's fast food, deep-fried foods, fatty meats, high-fat dairy products, junk food.


The American Heart Association agrees.


"We want people to eat more vegetables and fruit, more whole grains, more fish, more low-fat dairy products, and to reduce the saturated and trans-fat foods," says Barbara Howard, PhD, chairwoman of the AHA's Nutrition Committee. Trans-fats are found in margarine and many other fried and baked products.


"Eggs can fit into a healthy, balanced diet," she tells WebMD.


In fact, a Harvard study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association two years ago looked at the egg/coronary heart disease issue. Researchers found that consumption of up to one egg per day did not have a significant impact on risk for heart disease or stroke.


The AHA's advice: We should eat 300 mg or less of cholesterol in a day's time. An egg has 200 mg of cholesterol.


"Think of your diet as a budget, like your monthly checkbook allowance," Howard tells WebMD. "If you eat an egg during the day, make sure you eat fewer of the other foods that have cholesterol in them, like butter, high-fat dairy...