The Nutritional Value of an Egg

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

My vote is the egg, especially since this post is all about them.

The latest and greatest debate lately has been:“What is better for you, the egg white or egg yolk?”

Eggs are a great source of a complete high quality protein with few calories.

 One whole egg has ~5.5 grams of protein in only ~68 calories.

 Eggs contain choline, which is important, especially since our bodies can not produce enough of it.

 Without enough choline, you can also become deficient in another essential nutrient, folic acid.

• As recently as the 1920s, chickens were raised primarily for their eggs — not their meat
• A farmer ordered too many chicks on accident and ended up selling them off as meat, marking the beginning of chicken as a meat source

Eating Eggs May Be the Best Way to Get Choline

While the consumption of chicken meat became quite glorified, eggs became largely vilified, in part because of misconceptions regarding their cholesterol content. In reality, eggs, particularly the yolks, provide valuable vitamins (A, D, E and K), omega-3 fats and antioxidants.

They're also one of the best sources of choline available. Choline helps keep your cell membranes functioning properly, plays a role in nerve communications, prevents the buildup of homocysteine in your blood (elevated levels are linked to heart disease) and reduces chronic inflammation.

Choline is also needed for your body to make the brain chemical acetylcholine, which is involved in storing memories. In pregnant women, choline plays an equally, if not more, important role, helping to prevent certain birth defects such as spina bifida, and playing a role in brain development. According to a study published in the journal Nutrients, only 8 percent of U.S. adults are getting enough choline (including only 8.5 percent of pregnant women).

• Nutrients August 5, 2017
• Cholesterol-and-health.com July 2005

Among egg consumers, however, more than 57 percent met the adequate intake (AI) levels for choline, compared to just 2.4 percent of people who consumed no eggs. In fact, the researchers concluded that it's "extremely difficult" to get enough choline unless you eat eggs or take a dietary supplement.

Some of the symptoms associated with low choline levels include memory problems, lethargy and persistent brain fog. Your body can only synthesize small amounts of this nutrient, so you need to get it from your diet regularly. One egg yolk contains nearly 215 mg of choline.

Why else are egg yolks good for you? They're rich in the antioxidant carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, which are beneficial for vision health. Egg yolks are also an excellent source of healthy fat and protein, while providing you with vitamins that many people are lacking. Eating egg yolks may even be an ideal way to resolve other ommon nutrient dificiencies beyond choline, including vitamins A, E and B6, copper, calcium and folate.

 When I eat eggs for breakfast, I'm not hungry until lunch time and my energy levels are great. When I eat eggs & toast for breakfast, I get hungry sooner.

How can eggs be bad for you if humans have been eating eggs for thousands of years and High Cholesterol & heart diesase are "diseases" of the 20th Century.

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Egg Whites

Egg whites are a low-calorie, fat-free food. They contain the bulk of the egg’s protein. The egg white contains about 4 grams of protein,

 55 mg of sodium and only 17 calories.

 A single egg white also offers 1.3 micrograms of folate,

 6.6 mcg of selenium,

2.3 mg of calcium,

3.6 mg of magnesium,

4.9 mg of phosphorus and 53.8 mg of potassium.

Egg Yolks

It is true, egg yolks carry the cholesterol, the fat and saturated fat of the egg. However, what is often overlooked are the many nutrients that come with that, such as the fat-soluble vitamins, essential fatty acids and other nutrients.

 One egg yolk has around 55 calories,

 4.5 grams of total fat and 1.6 grams of saturated fat,

 210 mg of cholesterol, 8 mg of sodium, and 2.7 grams of protein.

As you can see, the egg yolk has more actual nutrients, but in my opinion the entire egg gives the most complete nutrition.It is interesting that over the years there have been different recommendations regarding the best part of the egg. New research shows that, contrary to previous belief, moderate consumption of eggs does not have a negative impact on cholesterol. In fact, recent studies have shown that regular consumption of two eggs per day does not affect a person’s lipid profile and may, in fact, improve it.

Research suggests that it is saturated fat that raises cholesterol rather than dietary cholesterol. However, if you suffer from coronary artery disease or have any heart health issues like high cholesterol, the recommendation is still to limit your dietary intake of cholesterol. Usually high-fat and high-saturated fat foods will also be higher in cholesterol.

Does the unbound (to biotin) avidin in the uncooked white have any effect on any other biotin in the digestive tract other than the 25 micrograms in the accompanying yolk, and if, as I suspect, not, and you eat both the white and yolk together, why wouldn’t supplementing at least 25 micrograms of biotin for each egg eaten this way prevent any net loss of biotin, providing the supplement is taken at the next meal or the previous meal?

 If the concern is that some residue of avidin remains in the digestive tract as long as one or two meals later, when the supplement is taken, wouldn’t taking a high potency supplement of, say, 5000 micrograms (5 mg) of biotin be enough to overcome that possible avidin residue? (I strongly suspect that it would.) I think more likely, though, there would be effectively zero residue remaining and a moderate size supplement of perhaps 100 micrograms per whole raw egg consumed should be all that is needed rather than 5000 or so micrograms. 

Eggs are often one of your most allergenic foods, but I believe this is because they are cooked. If you consume your eggs in their raw state, the incidence of egg allergy virtually disappears. Heating the egg protein actually changes its chemical shape, and the distortion can easily lead to allergies. 

It is my belief that eating eggs raw helps preserve many of the highly perishable nutrients such as lutein and zeaxanthin, which are powerful prevention elements of the most common cause of blindness: age-related macular degeneration. 

Fresh raw egg yolk tastes like vanilla.

Scrambling your eggs is one of the worst ways to eat eggs as it actually oxidizes the cholesterol in the egg yolk. If you have high cholesterol this may actually be a problem for you as the oxidized cholesterol may cause some damage.

What do you think ………………….?

The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice .All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.

Thank you … Along came the cholesterol scare and eggs were dropped like the proverbial hot potato. Recently the scary myths have been dispelled but the word has not trickled down, obviously. Really, an egg is merely a boneless chicken, packed with nutrition !