After the Easter egg hunts are over, Pinterest is bombarded with pins for creative ideas and menus planned around using up these beautifully dyed hard-boiled eggs. Natalie Allen, dietetics instructor at Missouri State University, offers food safety tips as well as creative ideas for making the most of this egg-centered holiday.
To make sure you’re safe in eating these eggs, Natalie cautions:
- All hard-boiled eggs need to be eaten or disposed of within one week (of hard-boiling) to eliminate risk of contamination or food borne illness.
- Do not keep the eggs out of the refrigerator for more than two hours before refrigeration.
- If the egg cracked either in the process of boiling, dyeing, hiding or playing with it, you need to pitch it – it’s probably not safe to eat.
Although eggs have earned a bad reputation for being high in cholesterol, Allen said that hard-boiled eggs have a good nutrition profile with good protein, a little bit of fat, and lots of vitamins and minerals.
“There used to be a lot of concern about eating too many egg yolks thinking that it would raise your cholesterol, and there are still some guidelines that need to be followed,” she said. Those with a history of high cholesterol or heart disease in the family should limit egg yolks to one per day.
Allen also serves as the Bears’ dietitian, and she said that hard-boiled eggs paired with a carbohydrate are an especially good post-workout snack for athletes.
Besides the typical candy-filled plastic egg, Allen offers fun options for young children that won’t melt and will keep the sugar high to a minimum, including bouncy balls, temporary tattoos, puzzle pieces and crackers.
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