The Better Baby Book by Lana Asprey, David Asprey Page A
Authors: Lana Asprey, David Asprey
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yellow than the yolks of commercial eggs. When deeper color is natural in a food, it's often an indication of high nutrient content.
Egg Warnings
Salmonella contamination of eggs is all over the news these days. In 2010, half a billion eggs from Iowa were recalled. Knowing the health benefits of eggs, we decided to look at the risks versus the rewards, and we're convinced that the benefits of eating raw egg yolks far outweigh the risk of Salmonella , especially if you take the simple precautions we describe here.
The rate of Salmonella contamination in eggs is about one in twenty thousand. That's incredibly low. This is an average for all eggs, including commercially raised factory-farm eggs, which make up the vast majority of what's on the market. The organic free-range eggs we recommend are safer because the organic environment produces healthier chickens that better resist disease and infection. Most of the time, Salmonella is not going to be on healthy eggs that were properly refrigerated. And if it is, it's likely to be on the shell and not inside the egg unless the shell is cracked. In that case, any Salmonella that was present on the outside of the shell will infect the inside of the egg. For this reason, we never eat eggs that have been cracked, even if the crack is slight. We urge any pregnant woman to use the same caution and recommend you wash your eggs before cracking them.
Preparing Safe Eggs
How eggs are cooked determines how healthy they'll be. If the yolks are overcooked, most of the healthy nutrients will be altered in such a way that they no longer optimize health. In fact, the oxidized cholesterol from hard-cooked yolks is actively unhealthy.
Overcooked egg whites—whites cooked to the point of being crisp or browned at the edges—aren't healthy, because they're oxidized. Conversely, if you eat too many egg whites that are raw, especially if you eat them without the yolk, you may develop a deficiency of a B vitamin called biotin, which is important in blood sugar regulation and hair and nail growth.
The perfectly prepared egg has lightly cooked whites and a runny yolk. But keep in mind that perfection is not our goal. Moving toward perfection is our much more achievable goal, and you're better off eating almost any egg cooked any way you like, as long as the yolk isn't overcooked. Hard-boiled or overcooked scrambled eggs are not healthy.
When we eat eggs raw, we gently wash the shells with a mixture of a few drops of iodine or grapefruit seed extract (GSE, available at most health food stores) in a bowl of water before opening them. And if we're feeling particularly concerned about the safety of an egg, we may even put a drop of edible GSE on the yolk after opening the egg, just to make sure to kill all the harmful microbes, including Salmonella . If we don't have those substances handy, we just use hot water and dishwashing liquid to wash the shell. Washing or sterilizing eggs before opening them reduces the risk of a Salmonella infection nearly to zero. During the wash, we submerge the eggs in water. If we see a thin stream of bubbles, that means the shell is cracked, and even if we can't see the crack, we don't eat the egg.
After washing the eggs, we use them in one of several ways. Often we simply add the raw yolks to our smoothies. If we cook the eggs, we put them in a frying pan with lots of butter (from grass-fed cows) on very low heat until the egg white is soft but solid. It should be completely white. If any of the egg white on top is still runny, we use a culinary torch (widely available at cookware stores and by mail order) to cook it, making sure we leave the yolk raw. This makes for great sunny-side up eggs that aren't burned on the bottom and that therefore don't contain harmful free radicals in blackened, oxidized parts. It is interesting to note that this technique is widely used to make perfect eggs at leading gourmet restaurants around the country. As an alternative, you can
Egg Warnings
Salmonella contamination of eggs is all over the news these days. In 2010, half a billion eggs from Iowa were recalled. Knowing the health benefits of eggs, we decided to look at the risks versus the rewards, and we're convinced that the benefits of eating raw egg yolks far outweigh the risk of Salmonella , especially if you take the simple precautions we describe here.
The rate of Salmonella contamination in eggs is about one in twenty thousand. That's incredibly low. This is an average for all eggs, including commercially raised factory-farm eggs, which make up the vast majority of what's on the market. The organic free-range eggs we recommend are safer because the organic environment produces healthier chickens that better resist disease and infection. Most of the time, Salmonella is not going to be on healthy eggs that were properly refrigerated. And if it is, it's likely to be on the shell and not inside the egg unless the shell is cracked. In that case, any Salmonella that was present on the outside of the shell will infect the inside of the egg. For this reason, we never eat eggs that have been cracked, even if the crack is slight. We urge any pregnant woman to use the same caution and recommend you wash your eggs before cracking them.
Preparing Safe Eggs
How eggs are cooked determines how healthy they'll be. If the yolks are overcooked, most of the healthy nutrients will be altered in such a way that they no longer optimize health. In fact, the oxidized cholesterol from hard-cooked yolks is actively unhealthy.
Overcooked egg whites—whites cooked to the point of being crisp or browned at the edges—aren't healthy, because they're oxidized. Conversely, if you eat too many egg whites that are raw, especially if you eat them without the yolk, you may develop a deficiency of a B vitamin called biotin, which is important in blood sugar regulation and hair and nail growth.
The perfectly prepared egg has lightly cooked whites and a runny yolk. But keep in mind that perfection is not our goal. Moving toward perfection is our much more achievable goal, and you're better off eating almost any egg cooked any way you like, as long as the yolk isn't overcooked. Hard-boiled or overcooked scrambled eggs are not healthy.
When we eat eggs raw, we gently wash the shells with a mixture of a few drops of iodine or grapefruit seed extract (GSE, available at most health food stores) in a bowl of water before opening them. And if we're feeling particularly concerned about the safety of an egg, we may even put a drop of edible GSE on the yolk after opening the egg, just to make sure to kill all the harmful microbes, including Salmonella . If we don't have those substances handy, we just use hot water and dishwashing liquid to wash the shell. Washing or sterilizing eggs before opening them reduces the risk of a Salmonella infection nearly to zero. During the wash, we submerge the eggs in water. If we see a thin stream of bubbles, that means the shell is cracked, and even if we can't see the crack, we don't eat the egg.
After washing the eggs, we use them in one of several ways. Often we simply add the raw yolks to our smoothies. If we cook the eggs, we put them in a frying pan with lots of butter (from grass-fed cows) on very low heat until the egg white is soft but solid. It should be completely white. If any of the egg white on top is still runny, we use a culinary torch (widely available at cookware stores and by mail order) to cook it, making sure we leave the yolk raw. This makes for great sunny-side up eggs that aren't burned on the bottom and that therefore don't contain harmful free radicals in blackened, oxidized parts. It is interesting to note that this technique is widely used to make perfect eggs at leading gourmet restaurants around the country. As an alternative, you can
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