Dietary Triglyceride Reduction: Getting the Best Quality Eggs

The purpose of this website is to present, to all who want the knowledge, a safe and dependable method through which individuals can lower their elevated blood triglyceride levels. However, it is heartening to realize you can achieve astonishing results - if you put your mind to it.

The first step to take when selecting eggs is knowing what to look for and where to find healthy eggs.

Here are some important guidelines to follow to ensure you are getting the best quality eggs:

  • Check the box to make sure the eggs are free range and organic, even if they have omega-3 added.

    However, it is important that you eat organic eggs. This is not necessarily cage-free or "free range" eggs.

    An egg is considered organic if the chicken was only fed organic food and will not have bioaccumulated high levels of pesticides from the grains (mostly bioengineered corn) fed to typical chickens.

    If they feed chickens flaxseed to increase the omega-3 fats they won't be as beneficial as if they feed the chickens seaweed or kelp, which have the far more beneficial DHA and EPA.

  • If you can, contact the company providing your healthy eggs and find out what they are feeding their chickens.

  • Purchase eggs from the farmer directly if at all possible.

In this way, you can be certain of the quality. If you cannot find a farmer to sell you eggs directly, then organic eggs from the store would be your next best option.

Organic eggs are an excellent source of high-quality nutrients in which many of us are deficient, especially high-quality protein and fat.

Although they may be a bit pricier than typical commercial eggs, the extra price is well worth it for the benefits they will bring to your health.

Specialty Eggs

Commercially raised hens are fed specially formulated feed that consists of corn, cottonseed, soybean meal, and/or sorghum. Sometimes animal by-products are also added to increase protein content.

However, in an effort to meet consumers’ demand for specialty eggs, egg producers have begun marketing specialty eggs. Unfortunately, due to higher production costs these eggs are usually more expensive than generic shell eggs.

There are nine types of specialty eggs available on the market today:

  • free-range
  • cage-free
  • omega-3 (nutrient-enhanced)
  • vegetarian/organic
  • fertile
  • pasteurized shell
  • Aracuana eggs (from Aracauna chickens, native to South America)
  • animal care certified
  • nutrient-enhanced (omega-3, lutein).

However, currently there are no set definitions for specialty eggs and you are advised to read the label before you buy.

Specialty Eggs: Egg Nutrition Center (PDF Document Requiring Adobe Reader)

Consuming Fresh High-Quality Eggs

Just as important as where you buy your eggs is how you prepare them for consumption. Here are some guidelines - contributed by Dr. Joseph Mercola, a nutritionally oriented physician from Optimal Wellness Center in Illinois - to ensure that you are eating fresh high-quality eggs:

  • Right before you consume the yolk, always check the freshness of the egg. If you are uncertain, don't eat it. This is one of the best safeguards against salmonella infection.

  • Don’t eat the egg, if there is a crack in the shell. You can easily check for this by immersing the egg in a pan of cool, salted water. The egg emits a tiny stream of bubbles, if the shell is porous and contains a hole.

  • If you are getting your eggs fresh from a farmer it is best to not refrigerate them. This is the way most of the world stores their eggs - without refrigerating them.

  • First, check all the eggs by rolling them across a flat surface; fresh eggs should roll wobbly.

  • If you want to properly judge the freshness of an egg, check its contents at room temperature. Eggs that are stored in the fridge and opened immediately after taking them out will seem fresher than they actually are. Therefore, keep the eggs of which you want to check the freshness outside the fridge for at least an hour prior to opening them.

  • Don’t consume the opened egg, if
    • the egg smells foul
    • the egg white is watery instead of gel-like
    • the egg yolk is not convex and firm
    • the egg yolk easily bursts.


How to Start Eating Raw Eggs

If you are not used to eating fresh raw egg yolks, you should start by eating just a tiny bit of it on a daily basis, and then gradually increase the portions.

For example, start by consuming only a few drops of raw egg yolk a day for the first three days.

Gradually increase the amount that you consume in three-day increments. Try half a teaspoon for three days, then one teaspoon, then two teaspoons.

When you are accustomed to that amount, increase it to one raw egg yolk per day and subsequently to two raw egg yolks per day.

Fresh raw egg yolk tastes like vanilla. It can be combined with avocado. Please stir it gently with a fork, because egg protein easily gets damaged on a molecular level, even by mixing/blending.

PLEASE NOTE: You must be cautious and not eat eggs every day as they have high potential for developing an allergy.

This is presumably due to the fact that eggs are being cooked. If you consume the 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.

So, if you have not been able to tolerate eggs before you may consider eating them uncooked.


What About Cholesterol?!

The less of total cholesterol you consume, the more your body produces it.

Cholesterol is so vital to our health that the body cannot rely on food sources alone for it. Becasue only less than 20 percent of total cholesterol comes from diet, the balance is being constantly manufactured by the body.

Thus, trying to reduce our consumption of traditional cholesterol-laden foods, such as eggs, butter, or meat, may be an exercise in futility.

It has been known for many years that very large doses of cholesterol lead to... a decreased percentage of its absorption. However, considerable variation is seen in absorption from person to person, and the ranges vary five-fold.

Unfortunately, there are no lab tests to predict if you absorb a lot or very little cholesterol. The fact is that the average absorption is clearly decreased at usual cholesterol intake. This could explain why studies with feeding eggs every day to volunteers have shown almost no effect on serum (blood) cholesterol levels (Journal of Lipid Research, August 1999).

For full health benefits, it is best not to cook the eggs.

With respect to preparing the eggs, raw eggs may not be the problem you think they are.

This 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.

But whatever method you use, the less exposure to oxygen and heat, the better the egg will serve as source of good nutrition for you.

When you heat the egg yolk, changes occur in the fragile elements that serve to support the vital life force within the egg.

The yolk, in many ways, is not very different from your own cells. As put by Dr. Joseph Mercola, once your temperature goes above 105 degrees Celcius 68 (221 degrees Fahrenheit) you will start to suffer serious health problems.

Similarly, heating the yolk above 105°C, or 221°F will also start to cause structural changes in many of the highly perishable components present in the yolk. The most obvious one is cholesterol.

The higher the egg yolk is heated, the more likely oxidation of cholesterol will occur.

This is especially true when it is combined with egg white as in scrambled eggs.

As a matter of fact, eating scrambled eggs is one of the worst ways to eat eggs. High temperature, increased air (oxygen) and light exposure, along with the typical use of chemically unstable vegetable oils and the presence of iron in the egg white, actually oxidize the cholesterol in the egg yolk.

In other words, scrambling eggs may lead to high levels of LDL-“bad” cholesterol known for its markedly damaging effects on the cardiovascular system. (Our blood vessels do not have receptors for cholesterol, only for oxidized LDL cholesterol).

So, you can eat as many eggs as you like, without worrying about cholesterol, as long as you don't cook the yolks.

A healthy person can have 3 - 6 eggs per week, preferably raw or soft-boiled, or sunny-side-up (never scrambled!).

If you are concerned about the risk of salmonella from raw eggs, you may rest assured that most people have a better chance of winning the lottery than contracting salmonella from eggs from healthy chickens.

Regular consumption of raw eggs -- for a healthy person, 6 to 12 eggs per week, Rocky-style, every other day -- can dramatically improve your health.

PLEASE NOTE: The key to healthy eating of raw eggs is to make sure you cook the whites. If you fail to do so you will eventually develop a biotin deficiency that can result in neurologic consequences.

For more detailed information about the highs and lows of cholesterol, read Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's book The Cholesterol Myths.

In this somewhat controversial book, Dr. Ravnskov exposes the fallacy that saturated fat and cholesterol - also present in eggs - cause heart disease.


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© 2001-2005 Reduce Triglycerides.com: Lowering High Triglycerides Naturally. Triglyceride Reduction TGs Formula - A Drug-Free Approach to Elevated Blood Triglycerides. All rights reserved worldwide. This document may not be copied in part or full without express written permission from the publisher. The information on reducing high triglycerides and nutrition provided herein is a general overview on this topic and may not apply to everyone, therefore, it should not be used for diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. While reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information on high triglycerides diet, Full of Health assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from use of the information herein.