In any case, the very idea of an egg endangering health was implausible. Eggs were the nutritionists' darling. The egg is packed with good things. It has the highest quality protein of all foods and is the source of eleven essential nutrients and fifteen important vitamins and minerals. They include B vitamin folate, which has been found to reduce birth defects, carotenoids (lutein and xanthophyll) that may reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration, and half the required daily dose of choline required to protect memory. Of the 5 grams of fat in an egg, only 1.5 comprise saturated fat, the fat fingered as harmful to the heart, which makes eggs positively virtuous. An egg, moreover, is as slimming as a bottle of vitamins: it contains only seventy calories. An egg does lack vitamin C, but that can be added with a glass of orange juice, a staple of the American diet...
In the early 1970s, out of the blue, the American Heart Association declared the egg a threat to the heart. The egg contained 278 milligrams of cholesterol, and food scientists had just decreed that no one should consume more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day...When I learned this, I thought of course that the scientists, being scientists, had arrived at a safe level of dietary cholesterol through proof. How wrong I was...[in 1968] a group of food scientists got together and hashed over the idea of setting a safe cholesterol standard. Some thought the whole idea unnecessary, but others were adamant. So the debate went back and forth, and finally a compromise was reached. The average human intake of cholesterol is 580 milligrams (per liter of blood) a day, so let's just halve that. Make it 300 milligrams...So, overnight, as it were, and on the basis of an arbitrary calculation, the egg was in trouble, deep trouble.
-- Gina Mallet, Last Chance to Eat
Dear friends at NY1:
It's not that I mind that you devoted editorial air time to what turned out to be, basically, an advertisement for the Pump Energy Food restaurant chain. I've never eaten at the Pump, but based on what I saw on your report, they do at least make an effort to use whole foods, and prepare them carefully. I think they may be a bit stricter than they need to be on the whole salting-the-food issue, but considering how much some restaurants oversalt their food, I will allow that this might be a good thing -- and if it isn't, hell, I'll bring my own salt. Likewise, I'm not going to eat nonfat mozzarella any time soon, but I'll grant them that it wouldn't kill me to watch my butter intake. And certainly, if I bought more lunches from the Pump and fewer from the Daisy May cart on 47th Street, I would be healthier for it, and maybe I would lose my ass just a little faster.
I understand it all, even if I don't agree with it all, and I know that you have to get their message across in a short time slot, as concisely and efficiently as possible. I just wish, though, that you could have resisted the temptation to insert this little nugget of information into your copy:
Everything on the menu is baked, not fried; no salt or sugar is added; and egg yolks and soda are strictly off limits. (Emphasis mine. -- Jen)
It has been almost six years since the Hu-Willett study, conducted under the auspices of the Harvard School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health, concluded that there was no link between the dietary cholesterol found in eggs and an increased risk of heart disease, and yet we are still so frightened of egg yolks, and the fat and cholesterol contained in them, that we are willing to jettison the healthiest part of the egg. Those nifty vitamins and minerals, those carotenoids that may protect us against cataracts and macular degeneration, that choline that may protect our memory, all of these are found in the yolk. The white, being pure protein, has none of these. And yet, we have restaurants that brag about not serving egg yolks. We have health reporters on local news stations mentioning these lovely little yolks in the same breath as soda, which, last I checked, did not contain any vitamins or minerals or anything to keep you alive but sugar -- excuse me, I mean high-fructose corn syrup. I'm trying to find words for how baffling and sad I find this, but all I can come up with is, well, nothing.
A postscript, to the guys with whom I stand in line at the deli for our breakfast sandwiches: If you are trying to watch your fat intake, then what is the point of ordering an egg white and sausage sandwich, or an egg white and cheese sandwich? (Or even the triple-dog-dare version, the egg white + cheese + sausage sandwich?) Do you really think that you are doing yourself any favors by skipping the yolks and then filling the vacuum with cheese? Do you really like the taste of egg whites? What do you get from these sandwiches? I'm not being food-snobby, or a crank. I am genuinely confused. I genuinely want to know.