Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992 TAG: 9202050247
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WILDER MAKES EGG LOVERS BOILING MAD
Governor Wilder ate lunch in Roanoke last week, conspicuously avoiding the deviled eggs."I don't eat eggs at all," said the governor. "Not healthy."
Not smart, either. The governor of this state is free to eat or not to eat eggs, guaranteed that right by the state constitution. But he ought to close his mouth while, and about, his eating.
In 1990 alone, 894 million eggs squirted from the innards of chickens in the Old Dominion. The eggs were sold for $63.7 million. Hardly chicken feed.
Egg ranchers do not take kindly to their governor using their product as a dietary punching bag.
The governor, says Cathy McCharen, "is just a poor, deluded individual. If he thinks eggs are a cholesterol threat, he's wrong. If he thinks eggs are caloric, he's really wrong."
McCharen is the vice president and director of the Egg Nutrition Center in Washington. She's humorless only when it comes to egg bashing.
"The governor," says Andy Walters, "is displaying his ignorance. I'm offended."
Walters owns Glenwood Farm in Amelia County, not far from Richmond. It is Virginia's largest chicken farm - 600,000 peckers dropping 400,000 eggs each day.
He also is appointed by the governor to the Virginia Egg Board. He now is the chairman and not a man to back down when egg integrity is at stake.
"He [Wilder] has said in the past that he avoids eggs for health reasons. We've written him. We've explained that eggs are the healthiest, safest, lowest-cost food available," says Walters. "He refuses to accept the truth."
The truth, according to eggers, is that eggs have diet cholesterol, not blood cholesterol. There's a big difference. Eggs are not, argue the pro-egg forces, the culprits in raising cholesterol - which clogs arteries and can cause heart attacks which frequently kill people.
The bum rap foisted on eggs' backs is due, says McCharen, to the butter in which they're fried, the sausage and the bacon with which they're served, and the mayonnaise in which they're deviled.
A single egg has 79 calories and is high in protein.
Walters says, with some exasperation in his voice, that Doug Wilder should know that: "He's parroting a popular misconception, and you'd expect better from a governor. He's been told better. He's been told the facts!"
For what it's worth, politicians have little impact on food consumption.
President Bush's broccoli bashing did little to entice broccoli haters to eat broccoli; likewise, it convinced few broccoli lovers to abandon their broccoli.
"Ask 100 people on the street of Roanoke what the governor thinks of eggs, and fewer than 10 percent have any idea," says Paul Ruszler, an egg specialist at Virginia Tech. "The fact that he says he doesn't eat eggs doesn't mean much."
Perhaps not. But you don't expect the governor to wrinkle his nose and admit he hates the smell of burning coal. Or to wonder aloud about syringes washing ashore on Virginia Beach. Or to mention how flat and boring Southside Virginia is.
He's everyone's governor, even the eggers'.