Eggs, Eggs, Extraordinary Eggs

We eat a lot of eggs at my house...and "no" we're not worried about our cholesterol! As we've discussed before, cholesterol is not such a bad thing. Shunned for the last several decades as this "high cholesterol" food that supposedly causes coronary heart disease, the egg seems to to be making a comeback - and rightly so! Eggs have been a source of high-quality protein and fat-soluble vitamins for millenia. Eggs that are properly produced are rich in just about every nutrient we know about. Eggs are valued as a "brain food" because of special long-chain fatty acids called EPA and DHA that play vital roles in the development of the nervous system in infants and the maintenance of mental acuity in adults. "Egg yolk is the most concentrated source known of choline, a B vitamin found in lecithin that is necessary for keeping the cholesterol moving in the blood stream." Moving = not clogging.

Eggs from pastured chickens are your best quality. Pastured chickens are not "free range" chickens; they're even better. In the pasture, chickens are eating bugs and worms and the nutritional quality of their eggs is far superior to those of "battery-raised" or even so-called "free range" eggs. Most notably, they contain a better fatty acid balance, one in which the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids exist in an almost 1 to 1 ratio. In eggs from chickens fed only grains, the omega-6 content can be as much as 19 times greater than the unsaturated omega-3. Remember, you want a good balance.

Never eat powdered eggs, a source of harmful oxidized cholesterol.

What about salmonella infections from eggs? The main reason for these infections is because of crowded production methods that require the extensive use of antibiotics in feed.

You might want to sit down for this next one. It's fine to eat raw egg yolks of fresh eggs, but you shouldn't over-do it on raw egg whites. Raw egg whites contain a substance call avidin, which interferes with the absorption of biotin, a B vitamin. Egg whites also contain trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with PROTEIN DIGESTION. These anti-nutrients are neutralized by cooking.

So, find the source of your eggs...a local farmer perhaps, and stop buying commercial eggs. Or better yet, if you can, raise a small flock of your own. It only takes about a half dozen or so hens to provide you with the most complete, most balanced, and one of the most perfectly created food sources available. www.backyardchickens.com is a great resource.