Eggs are a traditional breakfast food in the West and are popularly thought of as
highly nutritional. However, numerous experts disagree with this culturally
popular idea and instead advocate strongly for not consuming any eggs.
When egg companies use funding from the federally overseen American Egg Board
for marketing and advertisement, they are expressly not allowed to lie or be
misleading. And, for this reason, they have been warned by the USDA to not couch
eggs as healthy or nutritious, because doing so could be considered misleading.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Michael Greger from NutritionFacts.org
obtained some very interesting exchanges between the USDA and egg
companies that wanted to use its federally overseen American Egg Board
advertising funds. Here are some excerpts from Dr. Greger’s presentation
discussing this: “This some company trying to put out a brochure on healthy snacking
for kids. But because of the existing laws against false and misleading
advertising, the head of the USDA's poultry research and promotion programs reminds
them that you can't catch eggs or egg products as being healthy or nutritious….
You can't say eggs are nutritious at all.
Can't say ‘nutritious’. Cannot say eggs are ‘nutritious’, sometimes you have to tell
the industry a few times.
Can’t say for ‘healthful’, certainly can’t say they’re ‘healthy’…. Since you can't say eggs
are a ‘healthy’ start to the day, the USDA suggests ‘satisfying’ start.
Can't call eggs a ‘healthful’ ingredient, but you can call eggs a ‘recognizable’
ingredient. Can’t truthfully say eggs are good for you. Can't say they're good for you.
By law, the egg industry ‘needs to steer clear of words like healthy nutritious’.”
So, the USDA warned the egg companies not to represent eggs as either healthy or nutritious
to steer clear from false advertising claims. Let's look at some relevant
nutritional studies that illustrate this point. A competing risk analysis of the famous (Harvard)
Nurses’ Health Study found that consuming the amount of cholesterol found in just
a single egg per day appeared to cut a woman's life short as much as
smoking 25,000 cigarettes (or five cigarettes a day for 15 years).
Harvard researchers studied diabetes risk in a group of over 50,000 people and
concluded that consumption of as little as a single egg a day is “associated with
increased risk of type 2 diabetes in men and women[.]” This study in the Journal of
the American Dietetic Association examined the risk of atherosclerosis in
white and African-American communities and concluded that heart failure risk was
higher with greater intake of eggs.
(Harvard) Physicians’ Health Study found that regular
“egg consumption was positively related to mortality” or death in general.
Regarding prostate cancer, which is the #1 cancer in men in the United
States, this study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, found
that “[m]en who consumed 2.5 or more eggs per week had an
81% increased risk of lethal prostate cancer compared to men
who consumed less than [a half an egg] per week…. In conclusion [they said],
consumption of eggs may increase risk of developing a legal form of prostate
cancer among healthy men.” This finding is disturbing because prostate cancer is
very common in the West, and it's usually a slow-growing cancer. But, from this and
other studies, it looks like eating eggs (as well as animal protein in general)
makes this cancer more aggressive and malignant. Lastly, a review published in
the Canadian Journal of Cardiology is noteworthy. It was authored by three
prominent physicians: (1) Dr. David Spence, a leading stroke expert and director of the
Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Center; (2) Dr. David Jenkins, who is credited with
developing the glycemic index; and (3) Dr. Jean Davignon, Director of the
Hyperlipidemia and Atherosclerosis Research Group of Montreal and
co-founder of both the Canadian Atherosclerosis Society and the Canadian
Association for Familial Hypercholesterolemia. These very
prominent physicians asserted that dietary cholesterol should be limited to
no more than 200 milligrams a day, and brought attention to the fact
that a single large egg contains 275 milligrams of cholesterol, more than
their daily limit, concluding, in practicality, that nobody should be
eating any eggs. They explained that, “[d]ietary cholesterol, including egg yolks,
is harmful to the arteries” and “[s]topping the consumption of egg yolks after a
stroke or myocardial infarction would be like quitting smoking after the
diagnosis of [lung] cancer: a necessary action, but late.” Cholesterol is only found in
animal foods, and we don't need to consume any of it because our body makes
all of the cholesterol that we need. Now the interesting exchanges that were
uncovered by Dr. Greger further showed that the USDA has also warned egg companies
to not couch eggs as safe.
Here's more from Dr. Greger:
“[T]hey can't even refer to eggs as safe. ‘All references to safety
must be removed’ because more than a hundred thousand Americans are
Salmonella poisoned every year from eggs…. Instead of ‘safe’ you can call eggs ‘fresh’,
the USDA marking service helpfully suggests. But you can't call eggs safe,
you cannot say eggs are safe to eat, can’t say they’re safe, can’t even mention safety, can’t
say they’re healthful. All ‘references to healthfulness must be deleted’ as well.
Wait a second:
Eggs can’t really be called healthy? Eggs can't even really be called safe? Says
who…? Says the United States Department of Agriculture.”
The fact is the CDC estimates there’s over a million cases of Salmonella annually in the United States
alone. And eggs and dishes made with eggs are important vehicles for human Salmonella
infection. This study funded by the egg industry itself shows that Salmonella
can survive the sunny-side-up, over-easy, and scrambled cooking methods, with
sunny-side-up being a “method [that] should be considered unsafe.” In this study
published in the journal Epidemiology & Infection, strains of Salmonella
were found in eggs even after they were boiled for 8 entire minutes. The researchers
concluded that, “viable cells could be recovered from eggs cooked in any manner.”
In other words, if the concentration of Salmonella was high,
live bacteria could be found after cooking eggs in any way — no cooking
method resulted in the complete destruction of the Salmonella. And while
the egg industry tends to downplay these serious areas of concern, it appears they
have no problem
overstating the nutritional aspects of eggs. For example, the industry often
cites the medical benefits
of two particular compounds found in eggs — lutein and zeaxanthin. From
incredibleegg.org, an American Egg Board industry promoting website, “When
hens are fed a diet which includes yellow corn, alfalfa meal, corn gluten
meal, dried-algae meal or marigold-petal meal, xanthophylls are deposited in the
[egg] yolks.” From the website of Inicia, a large egg production and distribution company,
“Lutein and zeaxanthin are two antioxidants found in eggs that may help prevent
macular degeneration, a leading cause of age-related blindness.” These substances,
which by the way come from plants, do in fact appear to help protect our eyes from
conditions such as macular degeneration. But, the American Optometric Association
recommends eating 10 milligrams of lutein per day to protect eyesight, and
they note that two large eggs contain only a mere 0.3 milligrams, which
means you would need to eat a staggering 66 large eggs per day to meet
this 10-milligram recommendation. Or, as the American Optometric Association
also notes, instead you could just eat a single cup of kale or spinach, both of which
have more than twice the recommended 10- milligram amount. Clearly, it's better to
get these eye protecting antioxidant nutrients directly from the plant-based
source, and not use a chicken’s reproductive system as a highly
inefficient intermediary. I personally do not feel comfortable consuming eggs, and
I do not recommend them for any of my patients given these health issues. And,
if being problematic for our health wasn't enough, livestock in general
(including poultry and eggs) is highly problematic for our environment too.
According to scientists from the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization, the livestock industry is “the major driver of deforestation, as well as
one of the leading drivers of land degradation, pollution, climate change” among other
environmental problems, and is responsible for more greenhouse gas
emissions than the entire transportation sector combined. And, apart from its huge
water footprint, it is “probably the largest sectoral source of water pollution.” There
is now broad consensus that animal agriculture, which includes chicken and
egg production, is a global environmental disaster. Last but not least, consuming
eggs is also very bad for the animals too. One-half of the chicks bred in hatcheries
for egg-laying are males. And because they will never lay eggs, and have not been bred
to grow fast enough to be considered economically viable for their meat, they
are considered worthless by the egg industry and are treated as such. The
females and males are separated right after hatching, and then the male chicks
are disposed of by the millions, most commonly either by being ground-up
alive or dumped into plastic bags to slowly suffocate and die. The female
chicks who are not killed right after hatching don't have it much better, as
they have a lifetime of misery before they are killed. First, the de-beaking, or
the partial removal of the beak, is a common and standard practice in the egg
and poultry industries, to keep chickens from pecking at each other in stressful
and cramped conditions in which they live
(even for most labeled “cage-free”, “free- range” and the like). Chickens’ beaks are
full of nerve endings, and this practice is done without anesthetics, causing severe
acute and chronic pain. Whether they are in wired cages or in the “free-range” but
still crammed environments, they frequently have abrasions and lung
ammonia burns, as well as blisters from sitting on
urine- and feces-covered floors. And when the production of an egg-laying hen declines,
before she sent to slaughter, hens are often starved and denied any food for up to
two weeks — a process known as “forced molting” in order to shock their bodies into
one final egg laying cycle. When it's time to be sent to slaughter — at a
fraction of their natural lifespans — the chickens first endure a nightmarish
journey to the slaughterhouse, where many are killed and injured as they are roughly
loaded on top of one another on crowded transport trucks, and hauled sometimes
hundreds of miles without any food or water in all weather conditions,
including severe heat and cold. Those who survive the journey are typically hung
upside-down (with many breaking legs as the rushed workers shackle them). Then they
are stunned in electrical bath (meant to paralyze them but not necessarily render
them unconscious). Then they go through rotating blades meant to cut their
throats and “bleed” them (but many having the blade injure them non-lethally). And,
finally, they are dunked in boiling hot water to de-feather them (but for many, it
is here where they die — when they are bleeding, injured, in pain, and dunked and
drowned in scalding hot water). Please abstain from supporting this cruel
industry that result in massive suffering and death for foods we have no
biological need to consume, just like all the other animal foods. Please do so for
your own health, for the environment, and for the animals.
Thank you very much.