Eggeiei, Easter is coming up: For many years the egg was suspected of causing a serious increase in cholesterol levels. But that’s off the table. Today eggs seem to be popular and are often part of trendy dishes.
Eggs have long had the stigma of being a cholesterol bomb. But those times are over. Eggs are now somewhat “in” – traditionally special again at Easter (March 31st); whether colorfully painted, as a salad or alcoholized as eggnog.
The Federal Information Center for Agriculture (BZL) recently reported that per capita consumption of eggs had recently increased by six eggs compared to the previous year to 236 eggs. Ten years ago there were eight fewer eggs.
Eggs instead of meat
A possible reason for this is the comparatively low egg prices in the face of otherwise higher inflation. “Another reason could be the spread of the flexitarian diet – less meat, more eggs,” says the BZL.
The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) recently relaxed its consumption recommendations for eggs somewhat. “The portion of one egg per week is not based on a limit for health reasons (e.g. cholesterol),” it now says. In this case, it is more due to the environmental impact that animal products cause, says spokeswoman Antje Gahl in Bonn. In addition to about one breakfast egg a week, a few more processed eggs are okay, for example in pasta or cakes. There used to be talk of “up to three eggs per week” – but that already included the processed ones.
All in all, egg consumption – among younger generations – appears to have changed in recent years. Bohei and almost a cult arose in gastronomy and the Internet, for example around egg dishes such as Eggs Benedict, Eggs Florentine or Shakshuka.
Gone are the days when spooning out breakfast eggs seemed to be the highest form of egg eating in this country and it was just a matter of questions like “knocking or beheading?”.
The egg and Loriot
In the 1970s, Loriot dedicated a legendary cartoon sketch to the soft egg, in which the dialogue between man and woman at the breakfast table escalates completely (“How do you know when the egg is good?”, “I take it out after four and a half minutes, My God”, “By the clock or what?”, “By feeling – a housewife has that feeling” (…) “But it’s hard! Maybe there’s something wrong with your feeling”, “There’s something wrong with my feeling what not?”).
A lot has happened since then. Egg consumption was internationalized. Eggs Benedict (poached eggs on toast or English muffin with boiled ham or bacon and hollandaise sauce) have been appearing more often on menus in Germany for several years now. Previously, they were only part of the canon of egg dishes in the USA, where they are said to have been invented in New York at the end of the 19th century, as well as in finer hotels around the world.
Egg variations for breakfast
In Berlin there is currently a kind of hype about breakfast restaurants like “Benedict” or “Breakfast 3000”. In the Michelin-starred “Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro” a miso hollandaise coats the poached eggs; Customers can choose between brioche and sourdough bread.
Animal rights organizations fundamentally criticize egg consumption and the egg industry. Peta emphasizes that chicken breeds – like other birds – originally laid eggs solely to reproduce. However, chicken breeding has increased the annual number of eggs laid tenfold by around 20 to 30. Eggs are particularly problematic in processed products such as pasta, cakes and sweets. Eggs are often processed that the majority of consumers actually reject – namely eggs from cage farming.
Many nutritionists are more relaxed than before when it comes to eggs. Dietary cholesterol is only of limited importance for the cholesterol status in humans, says preventative medicine and nutritionist David Fäh. When you consume a lot of cholesterol, the body reduces its own production.
People have moved away from looking at individual foods in isolation because they have found that it is not clean from a purely statistical point of view, says Fäh, who teaches at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. “It always depends on the combination of foods and dietary patterns.” Health depends on your entire lifestyle: physical activity, stress prevention, alcohol consumption, whether you smoke or not.
Egg as a “sort of complete package of macro and micronutrients”
Fäh shows himself to be a kind of egg fan. The egg contains many things, including nutrients that are more commonly found in plant foods, such as folic acid. “The egg is a kind of complete package of macro and micronutrients.” It enables a cell to develop into a living being outside of its mother’s body. That’s pretty phenomenal – “if you consider what an expectant mother has to eat in order for a human child to grow up normally.”
An egg contains many nutrients that are also valuable for growing humans and other mammals, says Fäh. “We know from primates that some of them also hunt for bird eggs and also need them to supplement their predominantly plant-based diet.” The nutritionist emphasizes that there are definitely differences in egg composition. Eggs from free-range chickens that ate food containing seeds and kernels instead of standard food are richer in valuable substances such as unsaturated fatty acids.
And what about Easter? Is it okay to eat a lot of eggs within a few days during this festival? Yes, says Fäh. The latest studies suggest that on average you shouldn’t eat more than one egg per day – as an adult. For children it could easily be more. But this average can be classified over a longer period of time. So a few days of egg excess is okay.