#1: Are Eggs Healthy?
Fried, scrambled, hard-boiled, or poached. Eggs taste great AF. But are they healthy?
Experts debate this to date. Some are happy to eat eggs to their heart’s content, while others stress that even one egg per day is more than enough as far as cholesterol goes.
But really and truly, it’s just not the cholesterol that grinds our gears. The egg’s bad rap comes from ‘choline’, a compound found in egg-yolk.
‘Choline’ is a precursor for a nasty chemical created within our own gut: trimethylamine (TMA). This later changes into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), an internationally recognised risk marker for cardiovascular disease.
Bacteria living in our gut is responsible for converting TMA to TMAO.
It’s all about the big picture
All this sounds proper grim, but there is a silver lining.
The populations of bacteria in our gut are determined by what we eat on the whole, not on a ‘one off’ basis.
And since choline is found in many animal-based foods (meat, fish, poultry) and even refined grains, then it can be said that a diet heavy in these foods could mean more TMAO.
But when eggs were consumed as part of a whole-foods diet with a heavy emphasis on plants, the pattern changed.
In fact, some of the longest living populations on the planet are Lacto Ovo Vegetarians, vegetarians consuming both eggs and dairy.
A study by the University of Harvard showed that people who ate eggs regularly tended to have higher cholesterol - mostly HDL cholesterol (often-a-time, a good thing).
HDL is kind-of like a ‘mop up crew’ that can clean your arteries from their less useful cousin - LDL cholesterol. But in rarer cases, the LDL cholesterol was shown to rise too.
Another study by the University of Harvard showed that when non-egg-eaters were given eggs as part of their diet, their average blood pressures actually came down.
Always choose a good egg
We are what we eat. But we are also what we eat, ate. That being said, there is a difference in standard chicken eggs (caged birds) and pasture-raised eggs (eggs that come from totally free chickens).
If you can, and you should, go for pasture-raised eggs. They normally have strong shells and an orange-coloured egg yolk. Qualities that come if chickens are given their natural nutrients from the bosom of mother Earth.
Darker egg yolks are a telltale sign that the egg was sourced from one badass chicken.
Nutritional Information
1 egg weighs about 50 g (180 calories). It contains:
6 g of protein
5 g of fat
0.5 g of carbohydrate
187 mg of cholesterol
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a good egg here and there
You can absolutely eat eggs in moderation. You can even lessen the choline load by adding natural egg whites in place of a whole egg.
Though when eating whole eggs, go for gold with pasture-raised.
Eat them together with fruits, veggies and a class of carbohydrates known as ‘resistant starches’ (more on that later), and not in your standard western ‘bacon and eggs’ format.
