Healthy Eggs

The quick answer:  Eggs—a great source of healthy fats, vitamins, and other nutrients—are back in favor, again. 

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Review

You’ll recall that the 52 Healthy Changes transform our modern American diet (MAD) to a naturally healthy diet.  The oracles that guide this are food tradition, science, and scripture, especially the LDS Word of Wisdom.  Diet reformation is a little like fleeing Babylon to return to Eden.  You can do this in a year.  I once discussed a book with a publisher and they were doubtful people could stay on subject for a year.  “Couldn’t you do a 15-day program?” they asked. 

The 52 Healthy Changes follow 13 repeating themes, so each quarter we add another layer of understanding to those basic themes.  This is a good time to look over the first 13 changes and grade your progress.  You don’t have to be perfect—you just have to care enough about yourself and your family to be willing to make lasting change.

Fats

The first theme turns to one of the most maligned yet essential foods: fats.  In recent decades our society, with Food Inc and the government holding hands, attacked fats as being unhealthy.  Reduced fat, low-fat, and nonfat versions of about every traditional food were produced.  The war against fat was completely wrong and people who should have known better, made recommendations that were actually harmful.  So we present a different proposal:  Enjoy healthy fats—they make everything taste better, you know—and avoid unhealthy manmade fats.

The unhealthiest fats we consume are trans fats and the oxidized fats found in deep fat fryers.  So the 1^st Healthy Change advised to avoid deep fat fried foods.  That’s a big deal—never eating French fries, donuts, fast food fish filets, onion rings, or crusty chicken.  But it’s also a big benefit.

This week’s Healthy Change, the 14^th , advises to eat healthy fats, especially eggs.  You’ll recall that just a few years ago we were being told to avoid eggs.  Silly products were introduced to substitute for eggs.  I say silly because eggs are the source of life for most species.  Now we’re told to forget what was said—it’s OK to eat eggs again.

Omega-3 vs. Omega-6

You hear a lot about these fats so just to review, here are the basic facts:

1. Both omega-3 and omega-6 fats are essential to our health.  In fact the only essential fatty acids are variations of these two fats.  Remember this—your brain is about 60% fat, mostly saturated fat, but about ¼ omega-3. 
2. Omega-3 fat is essential to life but when exposed to oxygen is highly reactive—meaning it quickly turns rancid—so Food Inc. can’t use them in their processed foods.  So processed foods have used different methods—like hydrogenation—to steadily remove omega-3 fats from our diet.  They did this in ignorance at first; it wasn’t by malice in the beginning but the effect was no less harmful.
3. Omega-6 fats, also essential to life, are more stable when exposed to oxygen.  So Food Inc preferred these fats as they allowed a long shelf life.  Refined oils are generally high in omega-6 fats and deficient in omega-3 fats and that’s the basic problem for Americans—getting the ratio right.

Enjoy Eggs

Before we talk about eggs, we should note that omega-3 fats come in two groups: medium-chain and long-chain.  The shorter (medium chain) omega-3 fats are found in green plants, including algae and other sea plants.  We generally don’t get enough omega-3 fat.  That’s almost funny because we live on a green planet full of omega-3.  Two weeks ago our healthy change recommended eating green salads—a source of medium chain omega-3 fat and other nutrients.

The longer chain omega-3 fats are found in animal products.  It makes sense:  the shorter chain omega-3 comes from simple life forms like plants, while the longer chain omega-3 comes from more complex life forms like fish, fowl, and mammals that eat plants.  Consequently, eggs are also a good source of the longer chain omega-3 fats.

In addition to omega-3 fats, there are other egg benefits:

• Eggs are a good source of fat-soluble vitamins (K, A, D, and E) plus B complex vitamins like choline and B-12, in which many are deficient.
• Eggs contain two carotenoid nutrients important to the eyes—lutein and zeaxanthin.
• Eggs are a “perfect” protein, meaning they contain all the essential amino acids in the right ratio.
• Finally, eggs offer a good mix of fats.  A typical egg contains 1.8 gm of monounsaturated fat, 1.4 gm saturated fat, plus 1 gm of polyunsaturated (including a healthy ratio of omega-3 and -6 fats)

Healthy Eggs

It’s pretty simple:  healthy chickens make the healthiest eggs.  Unfortunately Food Inc wants to produce the cheapest possible egg.  You can’t blame Food Inc for wanting to be efficient, we need that.  But the better form of efficiency would be to make the healthiest egg at the lowest cost.  Which is what happened in olden times when chickens roamed around the barn, pecking at bugs, greens, and minerals.

The best source of eggs I have found is at the farmers’ market, where there will usually be someone selling free range eggs.  The next best source is eggs high in omega-3 fats.  You’ll see this on the carton label.  Basically they have to get some greens into the diet.  I don’t pay attention to the “cage free” egg claims because you can do this by rearing the chick in a cage and then just removing the door when it starts to lay.  By habit, the chicken may not leave the cage and still doesn’t have outdoor access.

Yesterday our daughter showed us the egg incubator her husband devised.  They live in a city but can have four hens in their yard.  So they’re thinking those four hens could provide plenty of eggs and get rid of bugs and weeds. 

Please comment:  There isn’t a fixed number for eggs in moderation, but some sources suggest six per week.  Please share your experience with the topics of this post, eggs and fertility.  Do you have a source for healthy eggs (from healthy chickens)?  Did you crave eggs when pregnant?

Comments

[kaelee]

Living in a rural area, i do have friends and neighbors who have extra eggs to offer us occasionally. About once a month i make it over to Heber, Utah where there is a Real Foods Market, and they have farm fresh eggs.. If i run out between those sources, then i buy some eggs from the store, but i hate having to because i believe the way food inc treats chickens is archaic. Eventually, if we can devise a plan to build a chicken fortress that will withstand raccoons, badgers, skunks and the like, we would like to raise our own chickens. I probably eat at least an egg a day.

[Ann]

I'm 8 months pregnant and have eaten two farm eggs almost every day of this pregnancy. I opted not to take prenatal vitamins this time around and figured the eggs (along with some liver and other nutrient-rich foods) would provide important nutrients in a form that was easier to absorb than vitamins. It made sense to me, but it was still hard to go against the grain and opt out of the vitamins.

[Kjirsti]

One of the mothering tricks I have learned is boiling up a dozen eggs and keeping them in the fridge. My two year old loves eggs, and when they're already soft boiled in the fridge I can add one to a breakfast of whole wheat bread or oatmeal, or a dinner of veggie pasta in a flash.

I've found the best way to soft boil eggs, is to lay them in a pan barely covered with water. Put them on the stove over med-high heat and wait for the water to get to a roiling boil then set the timer for seven minutes. When the times up, move them to a bowl of ice cold water. They come out perfect every time- no rubbery eggs for me!

[LeeAnn]

We have just begun our journey with chickens, so we will be our own source for healthy eggs. We have 5 chicks that are about 2 1/2 weeks old. Our hope is that they will provide enough eggs for our family of 6, plus a few extra to share with friends and family.

[Janell]

When buying eggs from the store, along with Omega 3 written on the package, is Organic something that is important as well?

[Krysta]

You know it is funny you should mention eggs and pregnancy. I did not crave eggs when pregnant, but I did prefer them for breakfast because they would somehow calm my queasy stomach. I didn't eat a lot of eggs growing up (picky child right here) and I still have to mix the yolks with the whites before cooking or I don't like the yolk texture, but I did notice the positive difference they made during my pregnancy and eat them much more frequently now.