It's 'okay to eat eggs again'

London: Eating eggs has an "insignificant" effect on cholesterol levels, according to scientists who are now recommending that most people can eat as many as they want.

The research is good news for the egg industry, which in recent decades has struggled to persuade people that eggs are a healthy, nutritious food.

Many authorities are still recommending that consumers should not eat more than three eggs a week - outdated advice that failed to reflect the evidence, the scientists said.

Last year, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority banned an attempt to revive the classic television advertisement from 1957 with the slogan 'Go to Work on an Egg' and featuring the comedian Tony Hancock. It was deemed no longer appropriate on the grounds that eating an egg for breakfast daily was not a "varied diet". In the mid-1960s, Britons ate an average of five eggs a week, but health fears helped drive that figure down to less than two by the mid-1990s.

In the review of existing evidence, published in the British Nutrition Foundation's Nutrition Bulletin, Juliet Gray and Bruce Griffin, of Surrey University, said it was a "myth" that eating lots of eggs increased people's cholesterol level.

Saturated fats were far more dangerous. they said, adding that people did not need to limit consumption because eggs "are one of nature's most nutritionally dense foods".