The Incredible, Edible Egg

I have stuck by the egg through thick and thin. Despite warnings about the cholesterol levels of eggs, I have continued to eat them with no apparent change in my cholesterol level.

I grew up eating eggs every single day. My Mother rotated the menu: fried, scrambled, poached, soft-boiled and then again back to fried. I liked the yokes to be runny in all but scrambled eggs, where I liked them firm but not dry.

At some point in our marriage, my husband became convinced that brown eggs were healthier for you than white eggs. That’s probably like saying black people are superior to white people, but whatever – from that point on we bought only brown eggs.

We now buy organic eggs at Whole Foods, where even the most expensive organic egg is a bargain compared to the cost of an equal portion of protein from virtually any other source anywhere. There are nights when I cook up two eggs for dinner at a cost of maybe 50 cents.

There are lunches where I eat egg salad, enhanced by Dijon mustard, a dab of mayo, sweet pickle relish, crisp peppers, green onions, and capers.

I was feeling just a tad guilty about my loyalty to the egg until we spent the last week at Chautauqua with my doctor and her husband. I watched her eat two eggs every morning for breakfast and said, “What the hell? If my doctor can eat 14 eggs a week, I am surely safe with my 3-4!” She’s never given me advice on eggs, probably because I have such a low cholesterol level. But I figure she can’t be terribly convinced about the danger of the egg if it forms such a staple in her diet.

I imagine that some day in the not too distant future the poor maligned egg will be shown to actually be beneficial to your health. Stranger things have happened...