Eggs
- more than you ever needed to know!
Marilyn Le Breton (c) 2012
This is the first article in a very occasional 'far more information than you will ever need on one food’ series, that might help you to make more informed choices about what to feed your family and your child on the diet in particular.
Eggs are highly nutritious & usually a considerably under-valued food source.
A medium sized egg contains only 78 calories, 6.5g of protein, 5.8g of fat (1.7g of this is saturated fat).
Eggs contain all vitamins with the exception of vitamin C. They are particularly rich in vitamins - B2, B12, D, A, Folate, biotin, panlothene & choline.
Eggs are a good source of the Zinc & Iron & the trace minerals phosphorus, iodine & selenium.
Myth buster - latest research shows that the consumption of eggs has no effect on increasing the body’s 'bad cholesterol' levels.
Trivia fact to stun guests at dinner parties (as you might guess from this I don’t get invited to dinner parties!):
The colour of the yolk is determined by the food that the hen eats BUT the colour of the egg shell is determined by the colour of the hen laying the egg. Yep white hens produce white shelled eggs & brown hens produced brown shelled eggs. Most eggs produced & sold in the UK are brown.
Although there is absolutely no nutritional difference between white & brown eggs, there was growing consumer demand in the 1970s for brown eggs, as there was a belief that they were 'better for you' compared to white eggs. The 'rationale' behind this was - if brown rice and brown bread were healthier than white rice and white bread, then the same must be true for eggs! WRONG! Not only about the eggs but also the rice & bread too in most cases. All that happened was that there was a mass cull of white hens, & brown hens now rule the roost (pun intended!).
Ever wondered why some eggs are double yolkers? Go on admit it - you've always wondered - these come from very young hens with immature reproductive systems. Double yolkers account for less than 0.1% of eggs BUT if you get one double yolk in a box you are likely to get more, as the egg laying hens tend to be of the same age in each farm.
What is the red spot that you get in some eggs? This is known as a 'blood spot' & is a ruptured blood vessel. As gross as it sounds, it is perfectly safe to eat.
What do the number codes printed on to eggs mean? Printed on to the shell of every egg in the UK in red ink, next to the lion symbol are a series of numbers.
The 1st number signifies the type of egg - or more to the point the type of life that its layer had, O=organic, 1= Free
Range, 2=Barn, 3=Cage.
The 2nd number will indicate the country of origin but increasingly this is being replaced by 'UK' if the egg is of British origin.
The 3rd number signifies the farm it orginates from. There is even a website you can use to find out the farm that your egg was produced at http://wheresyoursfrom.com/
Egg Allergies:
True egg allergies (i.e..the life threatening anaphylaxis type) are pretty rare according to official figures. Unfortunately, I seem to know a lot of children with it. It is an allergy that many are supposed to grow out of, again I have found this to rarely be the case with those that I know of.
However there are a sizeable number of children on the diet who are intolerant to eggs and the next bit addresses
this.
Egg Intolerance & the gf/cf diet:
The intolerance to eggs comes from the person reacting to one or more of the several proteins that eggs contain. It is very difficult to isolate which protein is causing the problem & even if you could, it is probably not going to be much help to you.
BUT the good news is that egg proteins do change significantly when heated & the longer you heat (cook or bake) an egg, the more likely it is that the protein will change so that it can be tolerated, as a few of us with egg intolerant children have found.
My eldest son, Luke, is very intolerant to eggs. Give him a boiled, poached, fried, or scrambled egg and the poor lad is a fixture on the toilet for the next 24-36 hours with chronic (& I use the word correctly) diarrhoea.
Other children following the diet who also have an egg intolerance have other reactions (sleep disturbances, gut pain, behavioural problems etc) so don’t think that diarrhoea is the only indication of intolerance.
However, I have found with Luke, that if the food containing egg is cooked for a long time, or a high enough temperature & has a low egg concentration to the overall ingredient volume i.e. bread, cakes & cookies, he can tolerating them without any problem.
He can even eat pancakes if I have them cooked on a very low heat for a long time. These also contain a
low egg concentration for pancakes – 1 egg = 15+ pancakes.
So if your child has an egg intolerance, it may be worth investigating cooking times & recipe concentration before rejecting them out of hand. I hope it goes with out saying that you should NOT attempt this is your child has a true allergy! Because the consequences can be awful if you get it wrong you may well decide not to experiment and no one would blame you for that.
Likewise it can be difficult to spot an egg intolerance if your child is fine with long cooked/baked egg containing products, it may not occur to you that the boiled egg your child had for supper is the cause of a broken nights sleep or a nasty nappy/bowel movement.
Fortunately for me (and Luke) it was obvious what it was that Luke was reacting too and I am grateful that he can continue to enjoy baked goods containing egg as long as I am careful. Baking without eggs is difficult (not impossible just difficult) so I am grateful that it isn’t something else that I have to accommodate on top of all the other intolerances the boys have.
Egg laying hens are fed on a meal that contains soya bean meal & oil. This does cause concern to those who have children who are intolerant to soya. But the soya protein has been broken down by the hens gut and does not enter
the egg. This is something that has been tested numerous times. So eggs do not contain soya protein & should be fine for those with soya allergies.
As an aside, egg laying hen meal/feed also contains sunflower meal, vitamins & mineral supplements & limestone which is added to harden the shell of the egg.
Safety & hygiene when handling & cooking with eggs:-
The red lion stamped on to the egg shell means that the eggs are British in origin & conform to an agreed set of hygiene standards that came about as a response to the ‘Edwina Currie Samonella Egg Crisis of the 1990s’.
Always buy eggs from a reputable supplier as eggs need to be transported & stored at 20C or below.
It is not necessary to store eggs in a fridge. Despite the presence of the lovely dimple moulded egg trays in refrigerators, you really don’t need to store an egg in a fridge. If you think about it, you never see them stored in a fridge in a supermarket, do you? I've always kept eggs on a counter in the kitchen and we live to tell the tale.
Eggs stay fresher longer when they are kept pointy end down. The rounder end of the egg contains a small sack of air & this needs to be kept at the top.
Always wash your hands after handling eggs, even in their shells. Just think about where they come from & what they can be covered with (I'll say no more, but Luke would say chicken bums & poo).
The best way to check if an egg is fresh, is to put it in a jug of cold water. If it sinks, it is fresh. If it floats, it is rotten.
As any chemist or biologist will tell you, eggs once they are broken, become the perfect medium for growing bacteria, so only break the eggs when you are ready to use them. Don’t be tempted to beat together eggs to ‘use later’. If a recipe calls for you to leave a dough or batter containing egg to ‘rest’, make sure it rests in a fridge.
Wash up anything that has come into contact with raw eggs as soon as possible for the same reason.
How many eggs is it safe to eat a day?
The old advice (from the ‘eggs are bad for you’ days of the 70s) was no more than 1 egg a day. But this never took into account the eggs used in baked goods, & puddings etc, so the daily intake would have been in fact much higher than that.
Advice today ranges from 2 a day to an unlimited amount. But as eggs are no longer seen as bad cholesterol agents of doom, there seems to be no medical reason for them to be limited. Keep-up-to-date with latest research and
do what suits you and your child best.
Eggs are highly nutritious & usually a considerably under-valued food source.
A medium sized egg contains only 78 calories, 6.5g of protein, 5.8g of fat (1.7g of this is saturated fat).
Eggs contain all vitamins with the exception of vitamin C. They are particularly rich in vitamins - B2, B12, D, A, Folate, biotin, panlothene & choline.
Eggs are a good source of the Zinc & Iron & the trace minerals phosphorus, iodine & selenium.
Myth buster - latest research shows that the consumption of eggs has no effect on increasing the body’s 'bad cholesterol' levels.
Trivia fact to stun guests at dinner parties (as you might guess from this I don’t get invited to dinner parties!):
The colour of the yolk is determined by the food that the hen eats BUT the colour of the egg shell is determined by the colour of the hen laying the egg. Yep white hens produce white shelled eggs & brown hens produced brown shelled eggs. Most eggs produced & sold in the UK are brown.
Although there is absolutely no nutritional difference between white & brown eggs, there was growing consumer demand in the 1970s for brown eggs, as there was a belief that they were 'better for you' compared to white eggs. The 'rationale' behind this was - if brown rice and brown bread were healthier than white rice and white bread, then the same must be true for eggs! WRONG! Not only about the eggs but also the rice & bread too in most cases. All that happened was that there was a mass cull of white hens, & brown hens now rule the roost (pun intended!).
Ever wondered why some eggs are double yolkers? Go on admit it - you've always wondered - these come from very young hens with immature reproductive systems. Double yolkers account for less than 0.1% of eggs BUT if you get one double yolk in a box you are likely to get more, as the egg laying hens tend to be of the same age in each farm.
What is the red spot that you get in some eggs? This is known as a 'blood spot' & is a ruptured blood vessel. As gross as it sounds, it is perfectly safe to eat.
What do the number codes printed on to eggs mean? Printed on to the shell of every egg in the UK in red ink, next to the lion symbol are a series of numbers.
The 1st number signifies the type of egg - or more to the point the type of life that its layer had, O=organic, 1= Free
Range, 2=Barn, 3=Cage.
The 2nd number will indicate the country of origin but increasingly this is being replaced by 'UK' if the egg is of British origin.
The 3rd number signifies the farm it orginates from. There is even a website you can use to find out the farm that your egg was produced at http://wheresyoursfrom.com/
Egg Allergies:
True egg allergies (i.e..the life threatening anaphylaxis type) are pretty rare according to official figures. Unfortunately, I seem to know a lot of children with it. It is an allergy that many are supposed to grow out of, again I have found this to rarely be the case with those that I know of.
However there are a sizeable number of children on the diet who are intolerant to eggs and the next bit addresses
this.
Egg Intolerance & the gf/cf diet:
The intolerance to eggs comes from the person reacting to one or more of the several proteins that eggs contain. It is very difficult to isolate which protein is causing the problem & even if you could, it is probably not going to be much help to you.
BUT the good news is that egg proteins do change significantly when heated & the longer you heat (cook or bake) an egg, the more likely it is that the protein will change so that it can be tolerated, as a few of us with egg intolerant children have found.
My eldest son, Luke, is very intolerant to eggs. Give him a boiled, poached, fried, or scrambled egg and the poor lad is a fixture on the toilet for the next 24-36 hours with chronic (& I use the word correctly) diarrhoea.
Other children following the diet who also have an egg intolerance have other reactions (sleep disturbances, gut pain, behavioural problems etc) so don’t think that diarrhoea is the only indication of intolerance.
However, I have found with Luke, that if the food containing egg is cooked for a long time, or a high enough temperature & has a low egg concentration to the overall ingredient volume i.e. bread, cakes & cookies, he can tolerating them without any problem.
He can even eat pancakes if I have them cooked on a very low heat for a long time. These also contain a
low egg concentration for pancakes – 1 egg = 15+ pancakes.
So if your child has an egg intolerance, it may be worth investigating cooking times & recipe concentration before rejecting them out of hand. I hope it goes with out saying that you should NOT attempt this is your child has a true allergy! Because the consequences can be awful if you get it wrong you may well decide not to experiment and no one would blame you for that.
Likewise it can be difficult to spot an egg intolerance if your child is fine with long cooked/baked egg containing products, it may not occur to you that the boiled egg your child had for supper is the cause of a broken nights sleep or a nasty nappy/bowel movement.
Fortunately for me (and Luke) it was obvious what it was that Luke was reacting too and I am grateful that he can continue to enjoy baked goods containing egg as long as I am careful. Baking without eggs is difficult (not impossible just difficult) so I am grateful that it isn’t something else that I have to accommodate on top of all the other intolerances the boys have.
Egg laying hens are fed on a meal that contains soya bean meal & oil. This does cause concern to those who have children who are intolerant to soya. But the soya protein has been broken down by the hens gut and does not enter
the egg. This is something that has been tested numerous times. So eggs do not contain soya protein & should be fine for those with soya allergies.
As an aside, egg laying hen meal/feed also contains sunflower meal, vitamins & mineral supplements & limestone which is added to harden the shell of the egg.
Safety & hygiene when handling & cooking with eggs:-
The red lion stamped on to the egg shell means that the eggs are British in origin & conform to an agreed set of hygiene standards that came about as a response to the ‘Edwina Currie Samonella Egg Crisis of the 1990s’.
Always buy eggs from a reputable supplier as eggs need to be transported & stored at 20C or below.
It is not necessary to store eggs in a fridge. Despite the presence of the lovely dimple moulded egg trays in refrigerators, you really don’t need to store an egg in a fridge. If you think about it, you never see them stored in a fridge in a supermarket, do you? I've always kept eggs on a counter in the kitchen and we live to tell the tale.
Eggs stay fresher longer when they are kept pointy end down. The rounder end of the egg contains a small sack of air & this needs to be kept at the top.
Always wash your hands after handling eggs, even in their shells. Just think about where they come from & what they can be covered with (I'll say no more, but Luke would say chicken bums & poo).
The best way to check if an egg is fresh, is to put it in a jug of cold water. If it sinks, it is fresh. If it floats, it is rotten.
As any chemist or biologist will tell you, eggs once they are broken, become the perfect medium for growing bacteria, so only break the eggs when you are ready to use them. Don’t be tempted to beat together eggs to ‘use later’. If a recipe calls for you to leave a dough or batter containing egg to ‘rest’, make sure it rests in a fridge.
Wash up anything that has come into contact with raw eggs as soon as possible for the same reason.
How many eggs is it safe to eat a day?
The old advice (from the ‘eggs are bad for you’ days of the 70s) was no more than 1 egg a day. But this never took into account the eggs used in baked goods, & puddings etc, so the daily intake would have been in fact much higher than that.
Advice today ranges from 2 a day to an unlimited amount. But as eggs are no longer seen as bad cholesterol agents of doom, there seems to be no medical reason for them to be limited. Keep-up-to-date with latest research and
do what suits you and your child best.
