Scrambling back to eggs

The humble egg could be about to make a comeback in our diets thanks to Margaret Thatcher. It turns out that the Iron Lady was apt to guzzle 28 of them in a single week prior to her election victory in 1978.

The release of her private papers has unearthed a copy of the Mayo Clinic Diet, a popular regime of the time and a precursor to the Atkins diet. In an effort to slim down and make it through the door of No 10 without touching the sides, Mrs T stuck to her Mayo Diet and managed to shed 20lbs in fairly short order, largely thanks to eating eggs.

And Maggie wasn’t the only one to go to work on an egg and shed pounds at the same time. Mrs T’s former advertising guru, Charles Saatchi, the modern art collector and husband of St Nigella of Lawson, existed on a diet of nine eggs a day and shifted 60lbs of blubber as a result.

So, it seems eggs are good for us after all. Remember all those scare stories from scientists (this was before global warming scare stories were popular) when we were told even three eggs a week would clog up our arteries with cholesterol and we’d be dead in no time at all? It turns out that it was all rubbish. The cholesterol found in eggs doesn’t directly impact on blood cholesterol levels. Yet again, the scientists got it wrong.

However, not only are eggs not bad for you, they’re positively good for you. An egg contains a third of the daily dose of vitamin D we need. Normally humans get the majority of their vitamin D from sunshine, but as we haven’t seen any proper sun since last September, eggs ought to be a very important part of our diet. They’re even a good source of iron and vitamin B12. And if you’re at all worried about salmonella poisoning, apparently British eggs are 99% free of salmonella, so you can probably enjoy them raw or lightly cooked if that’s your wish.

I’m off to toast some soldiers and dip them in a nice big runny egg. I suggest you do them same.