Nancy Neithercut
I am sure you have heard that eggs are nutrient rich foods. Well, that is true, and truly wondrous if you want to grow a chick. But are they good foods for humans? There are only two things wrong with eggs: the whites and the yolks.
Firstly there is the protein. Think of the protein in your body like the water in a fountain. Some evaporates, but most is recycled. Your body deconstructs the proteins it no longer needs into individual amino acids, and there are 20 that can be re-arranged into countless proteins, like the letters of the alphabet can be re-arranged into words, chapters, books, libraries…
An egg white is 100% protein. Mother’s milk is 6 percent protein, and that is enough to grow a baby! Adults require about 5% of their calories from protein (and many estimate as low as 3%). So what happens when you take in too much protein? Your body will need to get rid of these excess amino acids by buffering the acid with bone material, and then filtering them out through your kidneys, which taxes the liver and kidneys and can cause kidney stones, and osteoporosis. Think of pee-ing out your bones. This can be measured with protein in and calcium out, and all animal protein causes this.
Egg protein is especially high in sulfur containing amino acids (think of rotten eggs), which is an irritant and is harmful to your digestive tract and may lead to ulcerative colitis as well as other bowel diseases, causes bad breath, and stinky farts. Cancer cells in petri dishes cannot grow without methionine, one of these suffer containing amino acids, and added sulfur alone to the mix does not suffice to grow cancer, you need the entire amino acid.
The choline in eggs, which is touted as a good thing is actually harmful as it reacts with pathogenic gut bacteria only meat eaters have to form inflammatory molecules (TMAO), which can be measured in your body. Chronic inflammation is harmful to all of your body and the more TMAO you have the more heart disease you will get. The relationship between TMAO levels in the blood and atherosclerosis is directly co-related. (1) (2)
The yolks are high in fat which contributes to diabetes and weight gain, as well as your body making extra cholesterol just to digest these fats.
Eggs are high in cholesterol, which forms the plaques in your arteries. Your body makes all the cholesterol it needs for hormones, cell walls etc. Dietary cholesterol is not necessary and is harmful. High blood cholesterol is a biomarker for cardiovascular disease and is also is a biomarker for cancer.
If you eat a high fat (the normal western) diet, your liver will make even more cholesterol! The cell walls of animals is made of cholesterol, while the walls of plant cells are fiber, and we know that fiber, when eaten in whole plants feeds beneficial bacteria in your gut which helps improve mood and helps to regulate your immune system, turning it on when needed and most importantly, turning it off.
Cholesterol and fats directly harm the lining of the blood vessels soon after a meal. The studies done by the egg industry will say that eating eggs does not raise your fasting cholesterol levels, but notice that the harm is done before you are again in a fasting state (seven or eight hours after a meal). Another trick the researchers use is their subjects already consume a high cholesterol diet and their bodies simply are at their limit for absorbing cholesterol.
Eggs are the food richest in cholesterol:
Plant foods contain none, whole eggs have 272mg per 100 calories, while beef has 33mg, chicken 37mg, salmon 41mg, and lobster 73mg.
All animal protein increases your IGF-1 levels which are crucial for growing when you are a kid, but which grows cancer when you are adult. Your body makes all the IGF-1 it needs. Dairy is high in IGF-1, as well.
For egg substitutes don’t use egg-substitutes, like EggBeaters©, Second Nature©, and All Whites©; they are essentially egg whites with the health problems of high-sulfur protein discussed above. Egg whites also contain no essential dietary fiber, carbohydrate, fat or vitamin C. Many health-conscious people fall for this trap. For the binding of flours in cooking use Egg Replacer by Ener-G Foods, for breakfast try scrambled tofu (high in fat and not for daily use), for baking try 1/4 cup ground flax seed or chia seed with 3/4 cup water, boiled for three minutes.
What about the good?
The good is that by knowing these things you can change your diet if you wish to reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and all the other diseases you do not want.
This is a great website that talks about these and other problems with eggs https://www.egg-truth.com/eggs-and-our-health
(1) Senthong V, Li X, Hudec J et al. “Plasma Trimethylamine N-Oxide, a Gut Microbe–Generated Phosphatidylcholine Metabolite, Is Associated With Atherosclerotic Burden.” J Am Coll Cardiol 2016 Jun 07;67(22)2620-2628
(2) Koeth R, Wang Z, Levison B et al. “Intestinal microbiota of L-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat, promotes atherosclerosis.” Nat Med 2013 May;19(5):576-585
