Eggs are a healthy food and you should be eating more, not less!

It has long been known that eggs are incredibly nutritious. According to Dr. Weston A Price, ancestral cultures treasured eggs and they were considered a sacred food ideal for women of child bearing age. Even without any clinical research ancient people had the intuition and knowledge that an egg contains the nutrients needed for healthy reproduction. Eggs are the perfect foundational food for fertility because they contain every single nutrient that is essential for creating new life. Eggs actually contain nearly every important nutrient – they contain ALL vitamins except vitamin C which you can easily remedy by eating along side a fresh orange! Eggs are intensely nutritious, I’ve always told my daughter “eggs help us to be happy and healthy” and then I found this study (link) showing that eggs truly are associated with happiness (likely related to the amino amino acid tryptophan that is the precursor to serotonin).

Unfortunately, for well over 50 years the misguided and inaccurate fear around dietary cholesterol caused people to question their intuition and cut eggs out of their diet. In 2019, Nutrients published a research article on eggs titled “The Golden Egg: Nutritional value, Bioactivities, and Emerging benefits for Human Health (link).” They reviewed the recent history on egg consumption and the substantial nutritional benefits of eggs. In 1968 the American Heart Association took a stance against eggs claiming that dietary cholesterol causes high blood cholesterol and therefore heart disease – the evidence for this was poor, but unfortunately their recommendations stuck and many people cut back on egg consumption. The real impact of this recommendation has been monumental. As people moved away from affordable and nutrient dense eggs for breakfast they moved towards nutrient poor, high sugar cereals, and processed foods. The quality of the most important meal of the day plummeted. In reality, extensive quality research (and traditional wisdom) show no correlation between dietary cholesterol or eggs and heart disease. Eggs are a perfectly healthy food – THE perfect healthy food. Eggs are a great source of both protein AND fat – which is the optimal way to start your day. Eggs contain 38% monounsaturated, 28% saturated, and 16% polyunsaturated fats. Egg yolks are rich in A, D, E, K, B1, B2, B5, B6, B9, and B12, while the egg whites contain vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B8, B9, and B12. They also contain many essential minerals – calcium, copper, iron, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Eggs from pastured chickens who have full access to nature and grass and insects have deep orange yolks and are even more nutrient dense. Eggs also have antioxidant and anticancer properties.

Breakfast IS the most important meal of the day. I encourage you to eat multiple eggs, various ways (raw, scrambled, boiled, fried, egg muffins, frittata), topped with grass fed cheese, sausage, or bacon. You can add a small slice of sourdough with butter or oatmeal with cinnamon and berries or plain full fat yogurt topped with berries or honey or bee pollen for a perfect nutrient dense breakfast.