Eat eggs, eat less

For a while there eggs copped a terrible beating in the popular press and medical literature. When cholesterol was discovered to be bad news for your arteries and when eggs were found to be a rich source of cholesterol (a 50g egg has 230mg of cholesterol) all hell broke loose. Eggs were banned from diets or restricted to one or two a week. We now know that this was an over-reaction and a biological misunderstanding and in the process of rejecting eggs we were actually rejecting a pretty nutritious food and, according to a new study, a food that could help keep the weight off.

Eggs are a source of many nutrients including phosphorus, iron, vitamins A, B2, B12 and D, folic and pantothenic acids (vitamin B5). They are also an excellent source of absorbable protein. There is also cholesterol present in eggs as we mentioned but we now realise that the big problem in terms of cholesterol is when you consume foods that encourage your body to make its own cholesterol. Sugar and saturated fat will do this, and with this realisation, eggs have returned to the breakfast menu.

The protein content of eggs means that they should leave you feeling full during the day and lead to you eating less if you have had them for breakfast. To test whether this theory proves true in practice researchers had overweight or obese, but otherwise healthy, people take part in their study. The subjects were randomly assigned for one week to have either an egg breakfast or a breakfast cereal matched to eggs in every nutritional way (including kilojoules) but containing different quality protein (although the quantities of protein were the same).

After a break of two weeks the subjects swapped their breakfasts.

On days “1” and “7” of the study weeks the subjects were offered a structured buffet lunch to see how hungry they were and blood samples were taken.

All subjects ate less at the buffet when they had the egg breakfast. Additionally, the blood samples taken between breakfast and lunch showed lower levels of the hunger stimulating hormone ghrelin and increased levels of the hormone PYY3-36 (secreted by the intestines to signal satiety or feeling full) in people who had the eggs.

This suggests that the higher quality protein from the eggs compared to the protein from wheat leads to feeling fuller for longer, less overall food consumption, and hopefully less weight gain in the long run.

Always go for genuinely free range eggs and check that your eggs are fresh. Fresh eggs will sink, stale eggs will float. Alternatively, crack the egg onto a plate and the yolk of a fresh egg will curve upwards, that of a stale egg will be flatter.

A couple of eggs to start your day three or four times a week could be an eggcellent start to your weight loss program, if you will pardon the yolk.