The supermarkets are currently full of delicious looking, brightly coloured eggs. But eggs aren't just for Easter. More than a billion are consumed in Switzerland every year, including those used to make other foods such as pasta.

High in cholesterol – is this a problem? 

For a long time, eggs had a bad reputation and were thought to be a cause of high cholesterol. It's true that a medium-sized egg contains around 220 milligrams of cholesterol, enough to cover two- thirds of an adult's daily requirement (300 milligrams), and for this reason it was often said that you shouldn't eat more than three eggs a week. But new research suggests that healthy people shouldn't worry about eating eggs, and that one egg a day is perfectly okay. 

This is because if you're healthy, your blood cholesterol level regulates itself. If you consume cholesterol in your food, your body compensates by producing less. If a healthy person eats more cholesterol than their body needs, there's a mechanism to temporarily stop it being absorbed by the intestine, which means that dietary intake has little effect on cholesterol levels.