Diet, Nutrition and SupplementationPost here for supplement reviews or nutritional advice. If you're trying to get "ripped abz" THIS is where you should be.
I have found a lot of usefull information at Dr Mercola's website. At the end of this thread is a link to all of Mercola's egg articles. This first part is about Salmonella which many peole seem to think is going to kill them even if they should just eat there egg yolks on the soft side once in their life.
Quote:
Most deaths occur among the elderly, infants or people with weakened immune systems. From 1985 to 1998 there were 79 deaths associated with the S. enteritidis (salmonella) "epidemic" , which when equated to about five deaths per year is one-tenth the number of U.S. deaths caused by lightening each year.
Seventy nine deaths, wow!
I have read many times that eating raw eggs can cause a biotin deficiency because the avidin in raw eggs will bind to biotin and cause it to leave the body. It turns out that this is true but I have also read that when the egg is heated by cooking or runnuing under a hot tap for a minute, the avidin is destroyed. But there is more from the good Doctor...
Quote:
Revised Recommendations For Raw Egg Whites
Earlier this summer, I posted an article that suggested that one should not eat raw egg whites. This is the traditional nutritional dogma as raw egg whites contain a glycoprotein called avidin that is very effective at binding biotin, one of the B vitamins. The concern is that this can lead to a biotin deficiency. The simple solution is to cook the egg whites as this completely deactivates the avidin.
The problem is that it also completely deactivates nearly every other protein in the egg white. While you will still obtain nutritional benefits from consuming cooked egg whites, from a nutritional perspective it would seem far better to consume them uncooked.
Since making the recommendation in July, I have more carefully studied this issue. Two groups brought me to back this: pet owners who feed their pets raw foods and Aajonus Vonderplanitz, who wrote the raw food book We Want to Live. Both feel quite strongly that raw eggs are just fine to eat.
After my recent studies it became clear that the egg’s design carefully compensated for this issue.
It put tons of biotin in the egg yolk. Egg yolks have one of the highest concentrations of biotin found in nature. So it is likely that you will not have a biotin deficiency if you consume the whole raw egg, yolk and white. It is also clear, however, that if you only consume raw egg whites, you are nearly guaranteed to develop a biotin deficiency unless you take a biotin supplement.
Stuff like this is probably the number one reason I would have to hate the Internet.
I went through a few of Dr. Mercola's arguments and to be frank, I'm not sure how much water they actually hold.
The primary reason Salmonella control is important is to reduce morbidity (i.e. non-fatal disease) associated with Salmonella infection--not mortality (i.e. death). HIV actually has a 0% mortality rate in deaths attributable directly to HIV. In other words, HIV, in and of itself is not sufficient to kill a person--it's always an opportunistic infection like a cold (which turns into pneumonia) that does them in. While Salmonella poisoning may not be sufficient to you, it still poses a considerable health risk for dehydration and also for communication to the people around you, especially children and other populations in which smaller degrees of dehydration pose a higher health threat than to "normal" healthy adults.
Additionally, Salmonella is not the only risk of eating raw eggs. Other disease-causing organisms are also present in varying rates in raw eggs and the vast majority are easily neutralized by thorough cooking.
Contrary to Dr. Mercola's statement that Salmonella is only present in chickens raised commericially, and that if you eat free-range chicken eggs, the chance of Salmonella infection is negligible; it should be noted that a) Salmonella can be transmitted through the air from chicken to chicken, especially in molted flocks (molting is a practice commonly used by farmers to induce a second egg lay, whether free-range or not), and b) Dr. Mercola's reference for rates of Salmonella in the egg population is one of the most conservative estimates available in the literature.
If you read the study Dr. Mercola cites (Hope et al., Risk Analysis, 22(2):203, 2002), you will find that the estimate of 1 in 30 000 eggs is based on a model in which the estimates of the majority of variables were based on either very little or no supporting data--a limitation that the authors themselves state in their publication. The CDC's estimate is approximately 1 in 20 000 eggs--almost twice the incidence (not close, as Dr. Mercula states) of the Hope paper.
Despite the seemingly low infection rate present in eggs, however, the CDC cites an estimate of 1.4 million cases of Salmonellosis per year in the US. Mind you, this rate includes cases associated with food contamination, undercooked/raw poultry and other sources of Salmonellosis too.
In the end, it's a personal decision as to whether you want to accept the risk of eating raw eggs. Personally, I don't think Dr. Mercula's information is sufficient to make an informed decision about the issue. His mention that cooking eggs destroys the vital nutrients inside the egg, in my books, holds little validity, especially since he doesn't really ever mention exactly which nutrients he's talking about. The yolk of an unfertilized chicken egg does contain many nutrients--mostly fats for the embryo to use for energy. There are virtually no nutrients inside of an egg yolk that you cannot obtain through other less risky sources.
There are probably more people who don't drink tequila because they're afraid that it will make them sick, despite the low morbidity associated with drinking tequila. Why take the risk with eggs?
I know that this information is only from one site but it was easier to post that rather than search and post all the different sites I have read over the past year. I've also read similar stuff in books but it's too much trouble to go searching through all that as well.
I also thought it might be useful for someone in a similar situation to myself. I was stuck for ideas about protein sources until I read up more about eggs.
I guess my main issue is that if you're eating eggs primarily as a protein source, then cooking eggs (and thereby eliminating the risk of infection by Salmonella and related bacteria) is just a common-sense safety precaution against getting sick (not necessarily dying). While cooking an egg does denature the proteins, the amino acids remain intact and ultimately, even if you were to consume the eggs raw, those intact proteins would be denatured in your digestive tract (by digestive enzymes, which specifically cleave certain amino acid-amino acid bonds) before they saw the light of your blood stream (and therefore, any benefit that might be negated by cooking is negated by digestion).
I'm not saying you shouldn't eat eggs, but that eating them raw is exposing yourself to a risk that one need not take to garner the benefits you're looking for (i.e. protein).
On another note, what is it that prevents you from digesting those protein sources well?
I have just this minute heard on the radio that salmonella cases have gone down from 30000 the year before down to 10000 in the past year over here (UK). This is due to vaccination in the UK. There are still eggs and poultry coming in from abroad and not all of these have been vaccinated. Coincidence or what?
Bryan, since I hit my late thirties (I'm now 42) my digestion has not been so good. I have always had wheat and dairy intolerance/allergy but did not know it until I was about 38. I think part or all my problems stem from 38 years of eating foods that were not suitable for me.
I suspect that I do not produce enough hydrochloride(?) to digest protein. I have noticed that I digest protein better if I take a hydrochloride supplement half way through eating. I was reading a Bernard Beverley article in an old '80's Bodypower that said that a folic acid supplement can be very useful for this. He went on to say that it helps the body produce the hydrochloride rather than just adding it to food. I might give that a go but I will speak to my clinical nutritionist first.
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