If you are paying more for eggs labeled "lowered cholesterol", you're probably wasting your money.

Why? Because all eggs have recently been found to contain less cholesterol than was previously thought.

After analyzing eggs from 200 suppliers representing more than 60 percent of the egg industry, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, together with the industry's Egg Nutrition Center, found that the average large egg contains only 213 milligrams of cholesterol, or about 20 percent less cholesterol than the 274 milligram figure that has been-quoted since 1976.

The main reason for the new findings, says the chief of the USDA's Nutrient Composition Laboratory, Gary Beecher, Ph.D., is that scientists now have more precise methods of analyzing cholesterol than they did back in the late 1960's, when they made their initial determinations about the cholesterol content of eggs. In addition, it may be that chickens are now producing more eggs; as hens are pushed to lay more, the cholesterol content of their eggs generally drops.

When researchers at Pennsylvania State University's nutrition department purchased eggs without the special label, as well as eggs that purportedly contain only 195 milligrams of cholesterol, and then analyzed the two varieties, they found that the regular eggs averaged 204 milligrams cholesterol, whereas the so-called lowered-cholesterol eggs contained anywhere from 206 to 288 milligrams.

It is important to note that the new USDA analysis of 213 milligrams of cholesterol per egg has prompted the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee to change its suggested egg yolk allowance from three to four per week. A 213 milligram cholesterol analysis still doesn't make an egg the easiest item in the world to fit into the Heart Association's 300-milligrams-a-day diet for a healthy heart, but it certainly allows for a little more leeway than a 274 milligram count.

Personally, we prefer a naturally produced egg, with chickens on the ground (not packed in cages), roosters mingling with the hens, and a natural feed - free from stimulants and drugs - the way nature intended it.