BoomerGirl.com

Like Humpty Dumpty, the common egg has had a great fall.

And, despite their best efforts, nutrition experts are having a hard time putting the "incredible, edible egg" back together again.

In the 1940s, egg consumption in the U.S. reached a high of more than 400 per person, per year. By the early 1990s, consumption had fallen to 235, and a lot of those eggs were hidden in cakes, cookies and other prepared baked goods and packaged products, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The primary reason? Scientific studies in the early `70s linked high cholesterol to heart disease.

Never mind that the studies linked cholesterol in the blood - not cholesterol in the diet - to heart disease. Eggs caused concern because egg yolks are the most common major source of cholesterol in the American diet, the others being organ meats (especially beef liver) and crustaceans (shrimp, crab and lobster). How often do we eat those?

The 212 milligrams of cholesterol in a single large egg caused a lot of consumers to cut back on eggs, and a new survey conducted by the Egg Nutrition Center in January found 24 percent of us still avoid eggs for fear of the dietary cholesterol they contain.

Now experts are urging us to reconsider the egg.

"Thirty years of research has never linked eggs to heart disease," says Neva Cochran, a nutrition communications consultant and columnist for Women's World and Maximum Fitness magazines. "Nutrition professionals increasingly understand that the overall pattern of the diet, not the avoidance of particular foods, is most important for health and wellness. ... I tell people, `Choose your eggs by the company they keep.'"

For breakfast, she recommends fluffy scrambled eggs in the company of fresh fruit, whole wheat toast and a glass of low-fat milk or fat-free yogurt - as opposed to fried eggs with bacon or sausage, biscuits and gravy.

The body itself makes most of the cholesterol that gets into the blood, which can clog blood vessels and lead to heart attacks and strokes. The amount you produce, how well you metabolize it and how easily your body gets rid of the leftovers depends primarily on heredity.

As for diet, other components, particularly saturated fats (from whole milk dairy products, fatty meats, butter and tropical oils) and trans fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oils used primarily in frying), are bigger issues than cholesterol when it comes to coronary artery disease, says Dr. Jo Ann Carson, professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School's Center for Human Nutrition.

"Each has a role in raising cholesterol, but saturated fat is a bigger part of our diet (so it plays a bigger role). Cheese and bacon are not only laden with saturated fat, but also cholesterol. If we choose them to go in our three-egg omelet, we really compound the problem," Carson says. "Of course, there are healthier choices. We can choose turkey bacon and low-fat cheese for our omelets. As my kids were growing up, I used two egg whites with each whole egg for scrambled eggs. I often use egg substitute in place of eggs when I am cooking, but I also eat more deviled eggs than I used to."

The American Heart Association's latest nutrition recommendations do not limit the number of eggs eaten, as long as total dietary cholesterol is limited to about 300 milligrams per day, which means one egg a day, and less if you eat liver or lobster that day.