Few things scared Alfred Hitchcock as much as eggs. He was so revolted by their texture, and so afraid of oozing yolks (bafflingly, he would have preferred them to be red) that you might suspect The Birds was originally going to be The Chickens. Still, he wasn’t alone. Since the 1950s, especially, eggs have been one of the most divisive foodstuffs in culinary history, see-sawing between health scares and health joys, and culminating in this week’s news, from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, that eating an egg a day can cut the chance of a stroke.

Vindication! Let’s all have an egg and sleep easy. Still, I don’t need this as encouragement. I am very keen on eggs, stroke-defying or not, and their reputation as anything other than perfect has long baffled me. I eat between 20 and 25 a week. I have most of them for breakfast (boiled, a little salt, a slice of toast). The rest I carry in my bag, which now permanently smells like a Ziploc full of frittata. Even for those less monomaniacally inclined, though, the news does raise a wider question: where are we with eggs? Are these little ovoids in the ascendant? Are they shortening our lives or prolonging them?

I realise that 20-plus a week might not be not a reasonable amount of eggs to eat, socially speaking. But nutritionally it is, apparently, “fine”, according to Lucy Egerton, of the British Egg Information Service, who floats the idea that 12 a day (84 a week!) is the kind of intake worth worrying about. Eg(g?)erton reassures us that, as long as you remember you cannot live on eggs alone, they’re a very healthy food. And anyway, eating 12 eggs a day is not humanly possible – something I learned the hard way.

My ardour for eggs began for health reasons. A few years ago, wanting to try a protein-heavy breakfast, I switched to eggs, because: 1) they are the perfect protein, containing all the amino acids we need, along with various other minerals and vitamins B and D; 2) they are relatively cheap; and 3) they have the lowest carbon footprint of any animal protein. (This was not a factor for me, really, but I still use it as in my defence.) Suffice to say that my life changed immeasurably. I felt better, slept better and the change dovetailed with my getting my first work contract. I’m not saying the two were linked, but it’s feasible. This reliance has become, at times, a prison – or cage, if you will – since I need them every day, to the point that I once smuggled a box on board a flight to China in case China didn’t have eggs (it did). But generally, as one of the most globally ubiquitous foods, they are rarely hard to find, so I’m usually OK.

Happily for me, 2016 has been a good year for the egg (if existentially threatening in most other ways), in that we are eating more of them: sales were up again in the first quarter of 2016, following several years of growth. Sophie Missing, co-author of The Little Book of Brunch, suggests a piqued interest in the provenance of food as one reason: “I think it’s fair to say that people are more interested [in provenance today], and that might mean eating meat that is ethically reared and costs more, [and eating it] less often.” Eggs, she says, are an excellent substitute.

Still, past vilifications have meant that, until recently, eggs had become a very British scapegoat. It wasn’t their fault; or rather, it was – owing to their physical composition, you can measure things such as cholesterol in eggs more efficiently than in other foods. They were hoisted by their own petard (or canard, if duck eggs are your bag). In the past, it was thought that people should limit the number of eggs they eat because they contain cholesterol, but according to Egerton “current evidence suggests that dietary cholesterol does not increase the risk of heart disease in most healthy people”. Since then, recommendations on limits have been relaxed.

Then there was the salmonella scare of the late 1980s, which you can, of course, trace back to Edwina Currie. Some 28 years ago, she raised alarm over the link between salmonella and eggs, which prompted one of the biggest health scares in recent British history. I gave her a ring, and asked her how she feels about it now: no regrets, she said. “I had no choice. The public wasn’t aware of it. And as a health minister, I had to.” Currie’s declaration that most British egg production was infected with salmonella led to the slaughter of more than 2m chickens and, a fortnight later, her resignation. Sales in eggs went down 60% overnight, according to the British Egg Industry Council, which you could forgive for still being a bit touchy about it.

Whatever their feelings, by 1989 it had been established that there was some truth in Currie’s fears; a subsequent investigation led to a change in hygiene and storage and, later, the introduction of the British Lion safety mark, which now applies to almost 90% of UK-produced eggs. “Do I take credit? No. The egg industry worked incredibly hard. You could say they did a cracking good job,” Currie said with a laugh. “My only wish is that they would do the same for chicken.” Currie still enjoys eggs, “mainly eggs Benedict, which I’ll have at the weekend or at a hotel when I can stare into the eyes of a waiter and confidently order them”. She also wonders whether my intake prompts a need for some sort of laxative.

In the 1950s, the UK Egg Marketing Board coughed up £12m on advertising, including an inspired slogan chosen by no less a figure than Fay Weldon, which told us to “go to work on an egg”. The child in one of the ads is eating two, fried, but I routinely go to work on three, boiled; or rather, I eat three at work – a routine apparently so laughable to my colleagues that I am now forced to go and eat them in the office canteen because of the smell. But I continue, defiant, and have no intention of stopping.

My previous career in food journalism taught me that posh kitchens use Burford Browns. These cost about 40p an egg – peanuts, really, when you think of the nutritional content, and cheap in comparison to some of the other big players. Eggs from Riverdog Farm in California’s Capay Valley cost around £1 per egg, and you’re not allowed to buy more than a dozen at a time. At the farmers’ market there, there is a reliably long queue for them. According to Country Living, some of the best eggs come from Light Sussex hens, a breed prone to foraging, which makes for an especially creamy yolk. I have yet to try them, but the day is young.

It’s easy to become bookish about eggs, but to me, they symbolise more than just nutrition. They are readymade gifts from nature. In 2009 the Japanese author Haruki Murakami used the egg as a metaphor for the human spirit, in his acceptance speech at the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society: “Each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg.”

A memorable Garfield sketch shows Garfield and Jon, his owner, staring blankly at a cooked egg before disposing of it after thinking too much about where it came from. But it is precisely this – its rich paradox in existing as both foodstuff and embryo – that has allowed the egg to become a cultural marker. At least two egg-centric restaurants – Bad Egg and The Good Egg – have opened in London in recent years, and then there’s Instagram, where more than 40% of food pictures feature an egg, or so the BEIC claims. It’s staggering to think that, as a millennial, I have never posted such an image.

The only risk of a return to peak egg vilification is posed by the rise in veganism. Still, as Missing explains, “vegganism” might split the difference: “I think people will make their own choices, but the positives of eggs – relatively cheap, accessible, filling, good for you – are pretty overwhelming.” As to how that pans out, time will tell.

For me, though, the thought of children never knowing the joy of an omelette is worrying. Incidentally, Hitchcock had never even eaten an egg when he lashed out at them. The poor fool.

•This article was amended on 4 November to state that sales of eggs declined by 60% (not 40%) overnight after the 1988 salmonella scare.