Eggs!

Eggs! 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 egg, years, says, mcnamara, heart, eat, salmonella, diet, cholesterol, webmd, tells, risk, products, disease, day, american, very, one, nutrition, lutein, howard, found, foods, food, essential, dairy, association, against, he, eggs, vitamin, vegetables, undercooked, two, time, study, source, significant, shown, should, saturated, run, role, raw, published, protect, product, pretty, phd