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THE PLANT-BASED EASTER EGG MAKEOVER by Betsy Bruns Whether decorating eggs or deviling them, it is estimated that 180 million are purchased for Easter every year. Why has this become a tradition around the world? Easter is a religious holiday, but customs like Easter eggs may be linked to Pagan practices. An ancient symbol of new life, the egg has been associated with springtime Pagan festivals. Decorating eggs for Easter goes back as far as the 13th century. One theory for this custom is that eggs were once a forbidden food during the Lenten season. People would paint and decorate them to mark the end of the period of penance 18
| CONSCIOUS COMMUNITY MAGAZINE APRIL 2020
and fasting. Then they would eat them on Easter as a celebration. Flash forward many centuries and many advances in science and nutrition; we now suspect that eggs may be incredibly inedible. A 2010 study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology found a 19% increased risk for cardiovascular problems in people that consume the most eggs. A 2019 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracking 30,000 participants found that eating even small amounts of eggs every day
raises the risk for both cardiovascular disease and premature death from all causes. The more eggs eaten, the higher the risk for coronary heart disease, stroke and heart failure. According to The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), Americans are on track to eat more eggs this year—about 279 eggs on average per person—than they have in nearly five decades. Part of the problem is that the egg industry has scrambled the science, keeping Americans in the dark about the link between eggs and heart disease. In recent years, the majority of studies
