Here's to you Calidore (raising glass of red wine)Originally Posted by Calidore
Looks like you're sticking with it after several months since you started this thread.
As for me, I just finished a mediocre run. I couldn't begin to tell you what my weight, body fat, etc., is, I'm just doing enough to keep my breeches waist size from exceeding the inseam length.
Thanks very much, Gilliatt! Unfortunately, I'm too late on the pants size (40/36 when I started), but I've recently taken the belt in by one hole, so hopefully I'll be buying for a 38 waist soon.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
This thread is what we needed. Hope people with knowledge post here about health.
I was on a weekend trip with some friends recently and one of my friends was cooking breakfast for the whole group. I went over to see what he was cooking and saw he was getting ready to make a big batch of eggs.
Well, to my shock and horror, I noticed that he was cracking the eggs open and screening the egg whites into a bowl and throwing out the egg yolks. I asked him why the heck he was throwing out the egg yolks, and he replied something like this...
"because I thought the egg yolks were terrible for you...that's where all the nasty fat and cholesterol is".
And I replied something along the lines of... "you mean that's where all of the nutrition is!"
This is a perfect example of how confused most people are about nutrition. In a world full of misinformation about nutrition, somehow most people now mistakenly think that the egg yolk is the worst part of the egg, when in fact, the YOLK IS THE HEALTHIEST PART OF THE EGG! It's a shame at how many restaurants you can walk into these days and see that the "healthy" breakfast menu always has egg white items instead of whole eggs. Are we really still in the "fat-phobic" 80's?
By throwing out the yolk and only eating egg whites, you're essentially throwing out the most nutrient dense, antioxidant-rich, vitamin and mineral loaded portion of the egg. The yolks contain so many B-vitamins, trace minerals, vitamin A, folate, choline, lutein, and other powerful nutrients... it's not even worth trying to list them all.
In fact, the egg whites are almost devoid of nutrition compared to the yolks.
Even the protein in egg whites isn't as powerful without the yolks to balance out the amino acid profile and make the protein more bio-available. Not to even mention that the egg yolks from free range chickens are loaded with healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
Yolks contain more than 90% of the calcium, iron, phosphorus, zinc, thiamin, B6, folate, and B12, and panthothenic acid of the egg. In addition, the yolks contain ALL of the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K in the egg, as well as ALL of the essential fatty acids (EFAs).
And now the common objection I get all the time when I say that the yolks are the most nutritious part of the egg...
"But I heard that whole eggs will skyrocket my cholesterol through the roof"
No, this is FALSE!
First of all, when you eat a food that contains a high amount of dietary cholesterol such as eggs, your body down-regulates it's internal production of cholesterol to balance things out.
On the other hand, if you don't eat enough cholesterol, your body simply produces more since cholesterol has dozens of important vital functions in the body.
And here's where it gets even more interesting...
There have been plenty of studies lately that indicate that eating whole eggs actually raises your good HDL cholesterol to a higher degree than LDL cholesterol, thereby improving your overall cholesterol ratio and blood chemistry.
And 3rd... high cholesterol is NOT a disease! Heart disease is a disease...but high cholesterol is NOT. Cholesterol is actually a VERY important substance in your body and has vitally important functions... it is DEAD WRONG to try to "lower your cholesterol" just because of pharmaceutical companies propaganda that everyone on the planet should be on statin drugs.
In addition, the yolks contain the antioxidant lutein as well as other antioxidants which can help protect you from inflammation within your body (the REAL culprit in heart disease, not dietary cholesterol!), giving yet another reason why the yolks are actually GOOD for you, and not detrimental.
To help bring even more proof that whole eggs are better for you than egg whites, I recently read a University of Connecticut study that showed that a group of men in the study that ate 3 eggs per day for 12 weeks while on a reduced carb, higher fat diet increased their HDL good cholesterol by 20%, while their LDL bad cholesterol stayed the same during the study. However, the group that ate egg substitutes (egg whites) saw no change in either and did not see the improvement in good cholesterol (remember that higher HDL levels are associated with lower risk of heart disease) that the whole egg eaters did.
So I hope we've established that whole eggs are not some evil food that will wreck your body... instead whole eggs are FAR superior to egg whites.
But what about the extra calories in the yolks?
This is actually a non-issue and here's why... even though egg yolks contain more calories than just eating the egg whites, the yolks have such a high micro-nutrient density in those calories, that it increases your overall nutrient density per calorie you consume. Essentially, what this does is help to regulate your appetite for the remainder of the day, so you end up eating less calories overall. In addition, the healthy fats in the egg yolks help to maintain a good level of fat-burning hormones in your body.
Overall, this means that the extra fats (healthy fats) and calories from the yolk are so nutrient-dense that they actually HELP you to burn off body fat!
Also, your normal supermarket eggs coming from mass factory farming just don't compare nutritionally with organic free range eggs from healthy chickens that are allowed to roam freely and eat a more natural diet. Your typical cheap grocery store eggs will have lower nutrient levels and a higher omega-6 level and lower omega-3 level. On the other hand, the cage-free organic eggs from healthier chickens allowed to eat more natural feed and roam freely will have much higher vitamin and mineral levels and a more balanced healthier omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio.
I recently compared eggs I bought at the grocery store with a batch of eggs I got at a farm stand where the chickens were free roaming and healthy.
Most people don't realize that there's a major difference because they've never bought real eggs from healthy chickens... The eggs from the grocery store had pale yellow yolks and thin weak shells. On the other hand, the healthier free range eggs from the local farm had strong thick shells and deep orange colored yolks indicating much higher nutrition levels and carotenoids... and just a healthier egg in general.
This is due to the fact that a free-roaming hen allowed to roam on plenty of land will eat a variety of greens, insects, worms, etc transferring MUCH higher levels of nutrients to the eggs compared to an unhealthy hen that is trapped inside a dark factory farm hen house in horrible conditions and fed nothing but piles of corn and soy. It's a DRASTIC difference in the nutrition that you get from the egg.
So next time a health or fitness professional tells you that egg whites are superior (because of their "fat-phobic" mentality towards dietary fats), you can quietly ignore their advice knowing that you now understand the REAL deal about egg yolks.
And can we all please STOP with this sillyness about eating an omelete with 4-5 egg whites and only 1 egg yolk... If you want real taste and real health benefits, we'd all be better off eating ALL of our eggs with the delicious nutrient-dense yolks.
Prepared by a nutrition expert.
Wow Cafolini are you feeling OK? There's more than a sarcy sentence there. Quite true about eggs though, and good fats - hey it turns out that eating natural food our bodies are adapted to eating is actually good for you, funny that. All of those millions of manufactured products in packets aren't actually needed. Let's wave the flag for common sense, let it prevail!!
I'm pulling an Adrien Brody in an effort to rapidly slim down. I've been eating only one mid-sized meal a day for the last week and I've already lost 6 pounds.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
That's not good, Darcy. Unless you're getting paid seven or more figures like he is and have the role of a lifetime waiting for you, scale it back a bit. Unhealthy-skinny is no better than unhealthy-fat.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I'll stop when I get to 150, which is not an unhealthy weight for me. I'm 165 now. I have an opportunity to get into modelling and I look best at and around 150.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Hey Cafolini, I'm not sure where you got the information in your post, but some of it is WRONG, and I feel the need to correct it. I, too, hate the propagation of misinformation, and there is a whole heck of a lot of it going around right now. So it's nothing personal, but your post is heavily biased and completely untrue in places, and given my background in nutrition and farm animal science, I feel the need to balance it out a little.
Let's get something straight right off the bat: the nutrient profile of an egg is the DIRECT RESULT OF WHAT THE HEN HAS BEEN FED, no matter how she is housed or how much exercise she gets. I'm not here to support or condone modern farming practices or free-range, merely to talk about eggs and how their nutrient profile has nothing to do with the hen's housing situation.
Hens raised in cages are not fed heaps of corn, as this quote suggests. They are fed what is called a "complete feed"- it is an extruded pellet feed that is nutritionally complete for the hen (which corn would not be), ensuring that her nutritional needs are met to ensure both growth and production. In fact, BOTH caged hens and free-raging are fed this type of grain. Hens that are free-ranging DO NOT rely on their environment to provide them with adequate nutrition. Free-range hens do NOT have better nutrition than caged hens. Hens do not produce maximally if they are not fed maximally. Period.
The reason an egg has Omega-3 and -6 fatty acids in it is because they have been fed to the hen. They come from fish oils added to the complete feeds given to the hens. Whether the hen is caged or not, she will acquire these fats from her grain, NOT from plant matter that they might find by browsing in a cage-free setting.
The reason there is variation in the colour of the yolk is because of what the hen has been fed. Different ingredients in the hen's feed will cause this (IE., two different feeds may have the same nutrient profiles, but from different sources. Different sources of ingredients in the feed result in different colour). Darker does not equal better quality or "healthier". Lighter does not equal poorer quality. In fact, different parts of the world have different preferences for colour (purely aesthetic) and the producers in those countries feed to ensure that they will get that colour. For example, France tends to prefer dark orange, almost red yolks. Doesn't mean they are any healthier.
Shell quality. A hen must put 2g of calcium into every egg shell she produces. 1g comes from the diet, 1g comes from her own bones. You cannot load her up with calcium and get her to put 2g into the shell from her nutrition. It just doesn't work. So, there are a variety of reasons why the egg shell may come out soft, primary because is not meeting the calcium requirement. Most commonly, this is because her bodily calcium stores have been depleted for many reasons. Alternatively, she has ovulated before her egg has sat in her repro tract long enough to harden, which us usually a genetic problem. This has nothing to do with her housing situation.
It is a horrible, unfounded assumption to make that hens raised in a cage-free setting are healthier than hens raise in cages. It is also a completely untrue assumption that eggs from free-range hens are healthier than eggs from cage-raised hens. Just completely false.
I'm weary with right-angles, abbreviated daylight,
Waiting for a winter to be done.
Why do I still see you in every mirrored window,
In all that I could never overcome?
You don't know what you are talking about. The color of the yokes tell the story. You cannot make chickens in cages assimilate the feed properly. You simply can't no matter what you feed them. The things you said clearly show that you haven't read half of what's being said.
@ Cafolini - choline is where it is at. A very under-rated nutrient in my opinion. I sometimes take it supplementally.
Green tea is an excellent appetite-suppressent. As is yerba mate.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
That is completely false. Site your source, please. And if it isn't a peer-reviewed article from a scientific journal, it isn't worth citing.
Also, the word is "YOLK", not "YOKE". I certainly hope you are not eating yokes. That would be unpleasant.
ETA:
From the Journal of Poultry Science (Roberts, J.R. "Factors Affecting Egg Internal Quality and Egg Shell Quality in Laying Hens". (2004) Journal of Poultry Science, 41: 161-177):
"Yolk colour preference varies considerably
depending on the part of the world and pigments of either natural or synthetic origin
may be added to achieve a desired yolk colour. In Australia, the preferred yolk colour
is about ++ on the Roche scale. However, other countries prefer darker or lighter yolk
colour. Some countries such as Sweden do not allow the use of synthetic pigments. "
"Some of the problems with egg shell quality reported from free range systems (Fraser and Bain, +33.) may result
from an inability to ensure a balanced diet for the hens."
Soo...the opposite of what you said. Not a bad little review article if you're interested. The pdf is available for free as well: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article.../41_3_161/_pdf
Last edited by *Classic*Charm*; 05-23-2013 at 08:07 PM. Reason: Added references
I'm weary with right-angles, abbreviated daylight,
Waiting for a winter to be done.
Why do I still see you in every mirrored window,
In all that I could never overcome?
duplicate
Last edited by cafolini; 05-26-2013 at 06:25 PM.
Biological Immune Superefficiency
I don't know if what I'm going to talk about has been catalogued. The idea dawned one day thinking about a girl I met who's now dying from cancer.
About 20 years ago I met this girl who was disabled at an early age. The housing authority gave her a small studio apartment with a good size living room, a large closet, a bathroom and a small 8x8 ft kitchen. She lived most of the day in the kitchen and smoked anywhere from 3 to 3 1/2 packs of cigarttes per day. I often talked to her through her window, very slightly opened, because it was impossible to get in that kitchen without choking to death. I told her so, but she said she was very strong and couldn't get hurt by it. She didn't have any sign of being such a smoker; no cough, no phlegm, none of the usual effects. People observing this situation would say she might not have inhaled any smoke. But even if she didn't tried, living in that kitchen it was impossible not to breathe it in.
A few years ago she was diagnosed with cancer. It was thinking about this that the idea of Immune Superefficiency dawned on me. I didn't know what else to call it, since the carcinogenic compounds were there and taking effect.
As one who had consumed an egg yoke a day but has now reduced to three per week, I'm not convinced that egg yokes in quantity are fine. Recent studies suggest that eggs will raise cholesterol, and that not all HDL is "good" cholesterol.
I am certain that the dairy industry has long funded research that paints eggs in the best possible light, and all of it is flooding the internet.
"Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself"
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