Eggs: Crack One Open for Your Health
By Kim Archer | June 6, 2008
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Recent news articles might confuse you when it comes to whether or not eggs are healthy. You might see one expert telling you that you should eat no more than a couple of eggs a week, followed by someone stating that you can eat that many every day. Here are some of the facts about eggs.
According to the nutritional guides, eggs provide protein for your diet. Eggs are also great for people looking to lose weight. Proteins last longer in your system, so they quell your hunger longer than carbohydrates do. Scientific research, conducted at the Rochester Center for Obesity in Michigan, has shown that eating eggs for breakfast can significantly reduce the amount of food you eat during the rest of the day by up to 400 calories.
There are some other, less commonly known benefits of eggs, too. Lutein, an antioxidant in eggs, may help protect your vision. It prevents inflammation of a part of the eye called the macular pigment. The macular pigment forms a protective covering for the retina, and blocks light that might damage it.
Do you want to increase your brain power a little bit? Egg yolks are high in choline (300 mcg in one egg yolk), which is the major component present in acetylcholine. Acetylcholine provides flexibility to neurons within the brain, and aids in keeping the memory sharp. The good news is that you can aid your neurons in accepting, processing and storing information more quickly and efficiently, just by eating a single egg! This makes eggs an excellent memory-boosting tool.
Sufferers of UTIs (urinary tract infections) will be happy to hear that consuming eggs can make them a lot less frequent. The peptides found in the whites of eggs can bind to E. coli bacteria, preventing them from infecting the urinary tract.
When you hear that eggs (or any other food) are bad for you, find out where the information is coming from, and pay close attention to the facts. While you might have heard that eggs promote heart disease, one study done by the Harvard School of Public Health was unable to find a link between eating them and developing this problem. In fact, some studies have shown that eggs can help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
The culprit in high cholesterol is saturated fat. Eggs contain this fat, but only one and a half grams per egg, compared to five grams of desirable fats. They’re also full of other nutrients that can be good for your nails and hair, skin, and other parts of the body. So, if you’ve heard that eggs aren’t good for you, it might be time to take another look.
Topics: Nutrition |
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