7 Reasons To Get Eggs Back Into Your Breakfast Plan. That's Right! They're All Good!

Once shunned, the incredible egg is back in fashion! Loaded with nutrients and only 75 calories, it should be part of your day.

The Incredible Egg Is Back in Fashion. No Longer a Cholesterol Nightmare

cooking.stackexchange.com / Via cooking.stackexchange.com

We’ve got good news to share about a beloved breakfast staple – eggs! Once shunned as being a cholesterol nightmare, eggs are back, and back in a big way. Why the sudden shift in popularity? The Atlantic Magazine spells it out quite plainly in regard to The Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee:

“The 15-person advisory committee's new recommendations are emblematic of an essential ongoing shift in approaches to eating: focusing on whole foods, as opposed to avoiding or endorsing specific macronutrients (carbs, fat, or protein). Where nutrients are mentioned in the committee's recommendations, there are a few notable moves. Cholesterol in food is no longer cause for concern—vindicating the once-forsaken egg yolk and its arbitrary "62-percent daily value" of cholesterol, as current nutrition labels read. Only certain kinds of dietary fat (trans and saturated) are to be minimized, and whole grains are—starkly counter to the national trend in low-carb and gluten-averse ideologies—second only to fruits and vegetables as the most "health-promoting" foods that a person can eat.

Previous Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended limiting dietary cholesterol to less than 300 mg per day. One egg contains about 190 mg of cholesterol, so that made up a large portion of the pie. Apart from being high in cholesterol, eggs are a high in a number of valuable nutrients.

7 Reasons to Get Eggs Back Into Your Breakfast Plan

1) 75 calories

2) 7 grams of high-quality protein, contains all 9 essential amino acids

3) 5 grams of fat and 1.6 grams of saturated fat

4) Good source of nutrients, such as vitamins A, D, E, B12, folate, zinc, iron, and selenium

5) Also contains iron carotenoids such as lutein and zeaxanthin which may reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older adults.

6) Eggs also contain the nutrient choline, which is important for brain development and the prevention of neural tube birth defects.

7) Don’t skip the yolk, contains half the protein and many of the nutrients, including 100% of the carotenoids.

See this article from Webmd on eggs, gives good background on the egg confusion of the past.

Sources:

Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/ Accessed February 22, 2015.

Shaw GM, Carmichael SL, Yang W, et al. Periconceptional dietary intake of choline and betaine and neural tube defects in offspring. Am J Epidemiol 2004;160:102-9.

Grotto D. 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life. New York: Bantam Books, 2008.

United States Standards, Grades, and Weight Classes for Egg Shells, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004376 , Accessed February 22, 2015.

CATHERINE JONES is the award-winning author or coauthor of numerous cookbooks including The Calories In, Calories Out Cookbook, Eating for Pregnancy, and Eating for Lower Cholesterol. She is the co-founder/CEO of Werbie, LLC, a startup connecting women and technology, and a co-founder of the nonprofit Share Your Calories. She is a blogger and freelance journalist.