Why were we told in the past to cut down on eggs?

In the past it was thought that people should limit the number of eggs they eat because they contain dietary cholesterol. But it is now known that saturates - in which eggs are relatively low - are more influential in raising blood cholesterol than dietary cholesterol itself.
A meta-analysis in 1997 of 224 studies on more than 8,000 subjects demonstrated conclusively that saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, is the major contributor to high blood cholesterol levels in the general population.*
Recent research** from a large combined study of over 117,000 men and women in the United States has also shown that consuming up to one egg a day is unlikely to affect the risk of coronary heart disease in healthy men and women.Read more at: http://www.nutritionandeggs.co.uk/cholesterol/cholesterol1.html