Eggs: Not all created equal

 
 

Recently I spent about 6-weeks at the United Plant Savers herbal sanctuary (UpS), and was saturated with great information about herbs (obviously) and living close to the land. One of the great bonuses of living in farm country was the availability of organic, local food. Down the road from UpS lived a couple, by the name of Sheri and Gene. They sold free-run organic eggs and raw goat milk (which they told us was “only for the animals”). This excited me very much because I had never tried raw milk before, let alone raw goat milk (healthier than cows milk), and, I had many questions about ‘egg production’.




I brought the goods back to our kitchen and poached a couple of eggs. When I opened them up, they revealed a golden yolk (see title pic), indicative of a healthy, well-nourished chicken. For those nutrition nerds out there, the bright orange colour represents a high level of beta-carotene. I also noticed how hard the shells were when I cracked them, another sign that the eggs came from a healthy chicken (see pic above). These two observations brought a huge smile to my nutritionist face.


WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO COOK EGGS?


Eggs can be a great food to have as part of a complete diet. They have received some bad press over the years, attributed to their high cholesterol content. This has since been debunked by various scientific studies and deemed ‘pseudoscience’........so, EAT THE WHOLE EGG! Eggs contain high quality omega-3 fats in their yolk. In order to get the full value of these fats, eggs should be cooked at as low a temperature as possible. This is due to the fact that the omega-3 fats are very unstable and get destroyed when exposed to high heats. Therefore, in order from best to worst, eggs should be eaten soft-boiled, poached, hard-boiled, lightly fried, then scrambled. (Stay away from fried and scrambled eggs due to the high cooking temperatures)


Enjoy your eggs!

Josh


Lets do an
experiment!

Buy a conventional egg and an organic egg and compare the colour of the yolk and the hardness of the shell. This is a great one for the kids!

 

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