Eggs are the richest unprocessed food commonly consumed. Rational thinking people might partake of this delicacy on a special occasion, such as after the annual Easter egg hunt.
Any reasonable behavior is undermined by the American Egg Board whose mission it is to make every day Easter for everybody. The board has a $14 million annual budget to accomplish this job. According to their website (www.enc-online.org), “The American Egg Board’s mission is to allow egg producers to fund and carry out proactive programs to increase markets for eggs, egg products and spend money for fowl products through promotion, research and education”.
As the egg industry’s promotion arm, the American Egg Board’s foremost challenge is to convince the American public that the egg is still “one of nature’s most perfect foods”. Their efforts are working: US egg production during 2003 was 79.93 billion table eggs. This means, on average, 235 eggs a year for every single man, women and child in the country.
The purpose of a hen’s egg is to provide all the materials necessary to develop the one cell – created by the joining of a cock’s sperm, with the hen’s ova – into a complete chick with feathers, beak, legs, and tail. This miraculous growth and development is supported by a 1-1/2 ounce package of ingredients – a hen’s egg – jam-packed with proteins, fats, cholesterol, vitamins and minerals. As a result, the hen’s egg has been called, “one of nature’s most nutritious creations”.
Indeed, an egg is the richest of all foods, and far too much of a “good thing” for people. The components of a cooked egg, even a hard-boiled egg, are absorbed through our intestines. As a result, this highly concentrated food provides too much cholesterol, fat and protein for our body to process safely. The penalties are diseases of over-nutrition – heart disease, obesity, and type-2 diabetes to name only a few consequences from malnutrition due to the SAD (Standard American Diet).
Eggs are promoted as the ideal source of protein for people and often referred to as a “perfect protein”. Eggs are indeed high in protein, but the kinds of protein in hen’s eggs are not ideal for people. In one study, volunteer subjects were fed different foods to determine the ability of humans to utilize various protein mixtures. Investigators found that our bodies can utilize the proteins in a mixture of eggs and potatoes 36 percent more efficiently that those from eggs alone.
If the protein make-up of eggs were ideal, then you couldn’t improve upon it by adding potatoes, could you? Vegetable sources provide for all the protein needs of people and are much safer and more ideal than from hen’s eggs.
A whole egg is 32 percent protein and the white of the egg is essentially 100 percent protein. Infants, growing children and adults need, at most, 5 percent of their calories from protein. Therefore, eggs and egg products are six to twenty times more concentrated in protein than we need. Excess protein places burdens on your body, especially on organs of metabolism, the liver and kidneys. Animal proteins, and particularly those from egg whites, are high in troublesome, sulfur-containing amino acids and methionine. The sulfur referred to here is the opposite of the healing sulfur crystals, as you will see.
Here are six examples of how excess sulfur-containing amino acids in your diet can adversely affect your health:
1) Amino acids, as the name implies, are acids; the sulfur-containing amino acids are the strongest acids of all, because they break down into powerful sulfuric acid. Excess dietary acid is a primary cause of bone loss leading to osteoporosis and kidney stone formation.
2) The sulfur-containing amino acid methionine is metabolized into homocystine. This substance is a risk factor associated with heart attacks, strokes, peripheral vascular disease, venous thrombosis, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and depression.
3) Sulfur feeds cancerous tumors. Cancerous cell metabolism is dependent upon methionine being present in the diet, whereas normal cells can grow on a methionine-free diet, feeding off other sulfur-containing amino acids.
4) Sulfur from sulfur-containing amino acids is known to be toxic to the tissues of the intestine, and have deleterious effects on the human colon, even at low levels, possibly causing ulcerative colitis.
5) Restriction of methionine in the diet has been shown to prolong the life of experimental animals.
6) Halitosis, body odor, and noxious flatus (farts), akin to the smell of rotten eggs, are direct results of the sulfur-containing amino acids that we eat. The foul odors of sulfur gases should be a clear message that something is terribly wrong and deserves our immediate attention.
A significant amount of the $14 million collected each year by the American Egg Board is allocated for research projects, examining the effects of dietary cholesterol on serum cholesterol levels in order to prove that eating eggs will not raise your risk of dying of heart disease. This is quite an endeavor when you consider that eggs are the most concentrated source of cholesterol in the human diet – eight times more cholesterol than from beef. Traditionally, in scientific studies on humans, eggs have been used as the source to demonstrate the adverse effects of cholesterol on out health and out heart arteries.
Dozens of papers published in scientific journals and funded by “The Egg Nutrition Center” and/or the “American Egg Board”, downplay the hazards of eating eggs. So how do they demonstrate that eating loads of these cholesterol-filled delicacies has little effect on blood cholesterol?
The trick is to saturate the subjects with cholesterol from other sources, like beef, chicken, and/or fish and then add eggs to the person’s diet. Once a person has consumed 400 to 800 mg of cholesterol in the day, adding more, like an egg, causes little rise because the bowel cannot absorb much more cholesterol. Poor-quality studies, often funded by the egg industry, add to the false information they use to vindicate their products. The actual impact of egg feeding is seen when people who eat little cholesterol are fed eggs. When seven lacto-vegetarian college students, consuming 97 mg of cholesterol daily, were fed one extra-large egg daily for three weeks their “bad” LDL-cholesterol increased by 12 percent.
The real-life effects of eggs were investigated in a large population of nearly 6,000 vegetarians and 5,000 non-vegetarians over a period of 13 years. Within this group of nearly 11,000 people, those eating eggs more than six times a week had a 2.47 times greater risk of dying of heart disease than those eating less than one egg a week.
A 50-year study of nearly 2,000 middle-aged men, the Western Electric Study, found that dietary reduction and cholesterol intake of 430 mg/dl (same as 2 eggs) was associated with a 43 percent reduction in long-term risk of coronary heart disease, a 23 percent reduction of risk of death from all causes, and three years longer life expectancy. In addition to heart disease, higher cholesterol intake is also associated with more risk of strokes, blood clots, high blood pressure and cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, lung, and brain. Cholesterol is the most damaging to our arteries when it is present in an oxidized form, as free radicals. Eggs and egg-derived products are the main source of oxidized cholesterol in our diet.
Untainted research from high-quality studies shows that adding one egg to the daily diet of the average “healthy” person, already eating 200 mg of cholesterol from other sources, will increase their serum cholesterol by about 4 percent, which translates into an 8 percent increase in their risk of heart disease. Two eggs daily will mean a 6 percent increase in cholesterol and 12 percent more heart disease over the next 5 to 10 years. For young men, indulgence in two of these “Easter Bunny treats” daily, means a 30 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease over their lifetime.
Eggs are filled with too much protein, cholesterol, calories, fat, bacteria, and environmental chemical contamination, to be consumed with any frequency, with any expectation of health. Egg protein is a common source of allergy in infants, children and adults, producing problems from hives to asthma. Eggs are high in fat, which promotes obesity and type-2 diabetes. Fats and cholesterol in eggs promote the formation of gallstones and gallbladder attacks.
Egg-borne infections caused by salmonella bacteria can give rise to cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, chills, fever and/or headaches and food poisoning called salmonellosis. Eggs are a main contributor to human exposure to dioxin and other environmental chemicals that are known to cause birth defects, neurological damage, and cancer. Many nutritional qualities of eggs are similar to the nutritional qualities of cow’s milk, cheese, chicken, beef, and fish – foods known to cause major health problems when consumed in the typical amounts of people living in western societies.
Thirty-five years ago, based on the concerns of the American Heart Association, the Federal Trade Commission carried out legal action, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, to compel the egg industry to desist from false and misleading advertising, claiming that eggs had no harmful effects on health. These days, with a $412 million annual budget for product promotion, matters are even worse than before, with the egg industry now making unrestrained claims like:
“There is no need to avoid eggs on a heart-healthy diet”.
“Even cholesterol-lowering diets allow moderate amounts of whole eggs”.
“An egg a day may keep heart disease away”.
“Eat your eggs, they’re good for you”.
Unfortunately, we live in a “lawless wild west” when it comes to consumer protection from the big food businesses. Therefore, only you can defend yourself and your family from such profit-driven bogus claims and the harms that come with them!
Sources:
Chapter 6 – A Sane Diet For An Insane World – By Hesh Goldstein
[email protected]/”Eggs Are For Easter”
Zimmerman JA. Nutritional control of aging. Exp Gerontol. 2003 Jan-feb, 38(1-2): 47-52
P.S. After you cook and eat eggs, do not wash your plate or frying pan for day. Then when you find that you need a chisel to scrape the eggs off the plate and frying pan, you will realize that what happened to your plate and frying pan is what happens to your arteries. And as your consumption continues and your arteries become more constricted due to the buildup, you will have to admit that you, and only you, are responsible for the heart attack that could hit you one day.
About Hesh:
I have been doing a radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. To listen to the show please tune into 1080 or 108 am or go to www.kwai1080am.com on your computer at 8am Hawaii time. FYI, 8 am Hawaii time is 10 am on the West coast and 2 pm on the East coast. To call in, the number is (808) 524-1080.
Now, American Voice Radio will be picking up my streamed show and playing it all week until the next one takes place. To listen, go to americanvoiceradio.com and click on my link at AVR 2. Starting in December I will be doing another radio show on AVR at 9:00 am Hawaii time on Thursday mornings. Just go to the website, click on AVR 1, and listen live or tune in later and listen via the archive to Health Talk with Hesh.
See you on the radio!
In 2007, I was “forced” to get a masters degree in Nutrition to stop all the doctors from calling in asking what my credentials were. Besides that, they never liked it when I asked them what their credentials were that would enable them to treat an illness without drugs or surgery.
If you go to www.healthtalkhawaii.com and click on Podcasts and Articles, there are years of shows there as well as hundreds of health related articles that are completely free to listen to and read.
I am an activist. I am vehemently opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation, and everything else that the “pimps” (big pHarma, Monsanto, and the large food companies), and the “hookers” (the doctors, the government agencies, the Public Health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the “tricks”.
At 75, I am in 3 softball leagues, racewalk, do stand-up paddling, hike, swim, do weights and cardio, and teach women’s self-defense classes based upon 20 years of Wing Chun training. I have been a vegetarian since 1975 and a vegan since 1990, have no illnesses and take no meds.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child, I developed asthma, which plagued me until 2008 when I learned about and started taking the organic sulfur crystals. My asthma was reversed in 3 days and has not come back.
So far, 26 cases of autism that we know about have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma, osteoarthritis, joint pain, gingivitis, and erectile dysfunction. The sulfur has increased sexual activity, eliminated toxins, heavy metals, radiation, and parasites. It speeds up athletic recovery time, increases blood circulation, reduces inflammation, increases resistance to the “flu”, reduces wrinkles, allergies, PMS, monthly period pain, migraines, nausea, lowering high blood pressure, raising low blood pressure and way more, because the oxygen that the sulfur releases floods and heals the cells in the body.
The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids.
You can find out more about this on my website under Products.
My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, which has been published, can be viewed and purchased at www.asanediet.com. The book clearly explains why what you eat, for the most part, is designed to keep you in a state of declining health.
I have recently discovered two amazing super foods – Zeal and Shakeology – Zeal contains 30 amazing probiotics, anti-oxidents and more, all designed to build and strengthen the immune system and Shakeology contains 42. What’s great about Shakeology is that it is filling, replaces one meal and keeps you full for hours and helps with weight control and loss. For more info about Shakeology please email me or go to www.beachbodycoach.com/heshgoldstein. The good news about Shakeology is if you are not satisfied after 30 days the company will refund you.
And now I have come across an amazing bee pollen that is so soft it melts in your mouth and has so many benefits. It is rich in vitamin B12 and all B vitamins, proteins, minerals, beneficial fatty acids, carotenoids, bioflavenoids, antioxidants, antihistamines, enzymes, antibiotics, and natural phenylalanine, which acts as an appetite suppressant, and more.
My daily regimen consists of one teaspoon of the crystals twice a day, one scoop of the Zeal in cold water, one packet of Shakeology either in 8 to 12 ounces of water or added to my smoothie and a heaping tablespoon of bee pollen. For more about Shakeology please go to www.beachbodycoach.com/heshgoldstein.
Hesh Goldstein, MSNutri
“Health Talk” Moderator, K-108 Radio
POB 240783, Honolulu, Hi 96824
(808) 258-1177
www.healthtalkhawaii.com
www.asanediet.com
[email protected]