It was called “the incredible, edible egg” once upon a time by advertisers who wanted us to consume as many of them as we could. They were the perfect food.

Now, the beloved egg is once again under attack.

I love eggs. I always have. When nothing else seems right in the world, the egg has been my refuge. Scrambled, fried, poached, boiled – I couldn’t care less. Eggs are my dietary happy place.

Our love of them for breakfast is barely a century old. Before the 1920’s, most Americans ate a breakfast of a little fruit, maybe some grain porridge or a roll, and some coffee.

Then along came Edward Bernays who, as the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was pretty good at getting people to change their thinking about a product or idea. He was hired by the Beech-Nut Packing Company to increase consumer demand for bacon.

Bernays accomplished this by lobbying some members of the medical community to spread the idea that a heavier breakfast was better for our overall health. A lot of doctors did exactly that, and voila, the bacon and egg breakfast was born.

Soon, every movie star in a breakfast scene was being asked “How do you like your eggs?”

I’ve always been curious about how eggs became an accepted food anyway. I pictured two cave men talking one day:

Og: Hey, look. This fell out of the back of a chicken. What is it?

Grog: I don’t know. But there’s gooey stuff inside. Wonder how that would taste lightly scrambled over an open fire?

Og: What’s fire?

I ate them for breakfast at least four times a week as a child. Monday was usually oatmeal day, as was Wednesday. Saturdays were usually reserved for pancakes. But Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday we dined on eggs. I loved those four days.

Sometime during the seventies though, the alarm sounded. Eggs are high in cholesterol, doctors warned. Some of you should cut them out of your diet altogether, and the rest should limit yourself to just a couple of egg yolks a week.

So we all cut back, didn’t we.

Well, I tried to. I even switched to something I called “fake eggs”. They came in a carton and looked like scrambled eggs when you cooked them, but they tasted like a mixture of egg whites and Sherwin-Williams yellow paint.

Then, the medical community made a u-turn. “Maybe we were wrong about eggs”, they speculated. “Go back to making omelets.”

So we did – with glee. No more guilt. No more egg whites and yellow paint.

Now, the alarm has sounded again.

A new study out a few months ago has concluded that we should all go back to limiting our consumption of eggs for the benefit of our overall cardiovascular health. I’m waiting on a follow-up study that tells us that standing too close to an egg raises your bad cholesterol forty points.

I’m trying not to be bitter, but I’m a card-carrying egg addict, so I’m not responsible for my conduct. I’m steamed at the medical community for raining on my parade once again after handing me a pardon some years ago.

I’ve decided I’ll handle this news the same way I did before. Moderation is the key in most aspects of diet, and I plan to cut back – moderately.

But, if I keel over in my booth while having breakfast one day, I’ll likely have egg on my face.

Kent Bernhardt lives in Salisbury.