HEALTH : Is New Egg All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

The low-cholesterol egg’s debut in California last week has been hailed by food industry representatives as a technological breakthrough akin to the development of nonfat milk or the more recent availability of extra-lean beef.

But a number of health professionals, while intrigued by the item, doubt whether such an egg actually offers much of an alternative to those who must reduce their dietary cholesterol intake.

A Santa Maria-based firm, Rosemary Farms, has achieved a 50% reduction in the cholesterol content of eggs by providing hens a specially designed feed. Typical Grade-A eggs contain about 250 milligrams of cholesterol; the Rosemary variety is certified at about 125 milligrams.

An Alarming Link by Medical Research

Medical research has linked elevated blood cholesterol levels to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack. About 25% of the population is estimated to have high cholesterol levels, and it is this group that needs to monitor food selection. In severe cases, medications, as well as a strict dietary regimen, are prescribed.

For the general population, though, health officials recommend a daily intake of about 300 milligrams of cholesterol. But even the Rosemary variety’s new nutritional profile of 125 milligram per egg stands as one of the most cholesterol-rich foods per single serving available.

Such comparisons have not dampened enthusiasm.

“It’s one of the greatest advances in egg technology that has ever come down the pike,” said Robert D. Pierre of the California Egg Commission in Upland. “It’s certainly a big deal and it is going to fill a need for those persons with a genetic problem (with elevated cholesterol) and those who are concerned about cholesterol in general.”

While production has remained fairly steady over the past few years, per capita egg consumption in this country has dropped steadily in the last decade, Pierre said. One reason for the decline is consumer concerns about eggs’ cholesterol content.

Paul May, Rosemary Farms’ general manager, said it was just such concerns that he hoped to address when the company embarked on the reduced cholesterol program in January.

“We talked about this for some time and rather than take the bull by the horns we took the chicken and did something about (the egg),” he said.

The key to the process is, indeed, the feed.

Free of Animal Byproducts

May says that a company nutritionist developed the formula used to obtain the cholesterol reductions. Although he would not specify the ingredients, he said that the compound was free of any animal byproducts. Traditionally, hens used for either meat or egg-laying purposes are fed pellets that are composed, to some degree, of highly processed chicken parts such as fat, feathers and bone meal.

Industry observers believe that Rosemary Farms is getting cholesterol reductions by feeding chickens an assortment of grains or other nonmeat foods. The company’s variety is also lower in sodium than regular eggs, but the difference in terms of an adult’s daily diet is negligible.

Avoiding Growth Enhancers

Further, May says the farm, founded in 1925, is not using antibiotics or hormones, substances administered to food-producing animals as growth enhancers in the past.

The Rosemary Farms eggs, sold at some Hughes Markets stores in Southern California, are priced about 30% higher than regular eggs. The cost differential, about 60 cents more a dozen, is a result of the additional feed ingredient costs, May says.

A third of the company’s 300,000 chickens are on the special formula and sales of the eggs now are about 15,000 a week--far short of capacity.

“We are still working on getting the cholesterol level even lower and are not going to stop here,” May said.

Another variety of low-cholesterol egg is also likely to enter retail channels in the coming months. But this strain is an invention of a Japanese firm, Mitsubishi, and is being promoted as lowering the cholesterol levels in humans who regularly consume the eggs.

Mixed Reaction

These advances are getting a mixed reaction in the medical community.

“Dietary cholesterol has been overblown because it is such a small contributor to cholesterol in the bloodstream,” said Barbara Schneeman, a Ph. D and UC Davis nutrition professor. “What you eat and what shows up in the blood are not equivalent. Many people confuse that fact. . . . It’s not a straight shot.”

Schneeman says that the real dietary evil is fat and that cholesterol forms only a fraction of all the fats present in foods.

David Kritchevsky, a Ph. D and associate director of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, agreed.

“The thing that raises blood cholesterol more is saturated fat,” he said. “The advent of a low-cholesterol egg that is safe to eat would be interesting if that particular egg acts like (a regular) egg in terms of available protein.”

Eggs, Kritchevsky noted, are a good source of protein.

Contributions Questioned

The reduced-cholesterol egg’s contributions were also questioned by a consumer advocacy group.

“It’s a marketing gimmick,” said Rod Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington. “For people who have no cholesterol problems, it doesn’t really matter which egg they eat. And for people that do have a problem, well, they will still have to be careful . . . because 125 milligrams of cholesterol is still high for a single serving.”

Nevertheless, Kritchevsky said that the reduced-cholesterol egg may have importance even if it’s only psychological.

“It would be significant in the sense that we are being told to eat less cholesterol and then this is a good way to do that. If,” he says, “it still tastes like an egg.”

May said private and public tests have shown that, in terms of taste, the Rosemary variety is identical to regular eggs.