You can't beat an egg Fay Weldon and her friends in advertising were right after all in their catchy advice: "Go to work on an egg." Eggs, we report today, are better than ever because chickens eat a healthier diet (less meat, more vegetable oil). So eggs contain less fat and lots of vitamin D, which is tremendously fashionable. When wartime rationing limited everyone to an egg a week, the nation felt nostalgia for the pre-war inquiry at breakfast time: "One egg or two?" In our own time the egg's enemy has been fear of cholesterol and no doubt a lurking anxiety about poor old hens not enjoying a fulfilling life. Now that even supermarkets realise the marketing benefits of kinder egg-production, customers are practically introduced to the very chicken that has laid their egg that day. If the food pendulum swings much more, we'll be reaching for a pinta milk a day too. Gold top, anyone?