Hi guys, Just a quick question about eggs... ive been following a bulking diet for a month or so but just cant get used to eating 7 egg whites and one whole egg every morning! the porridge and fruit etc is fine and the rest of my meals throughout the day aren't a problem either, its just the eggs. My question is.. if i were to have raw eggs instead, either on their own or in milk, would this still be as beneficial? i have no problems drinking 8 or 9 raw eggs, either with or without milk, so i feel this would be better for me but would it still be as good for me? for building muscle like? cheers, sam
Just found a couple of decent articles about this that suggest it would be just as good, but still wanted to ask here for the differences in personal opinion etc
If you don't want to eat the eggs, don't eat the eggs. Presumably you're only eating eggs to boost protein levels, so substitute them either with protein powder or other food with significant protein count. A tuna sandwich probably has about the same amount of protein as 5 egg whites. 250ml full fat milk picks up most of the rest.
Don't overthink it. Just eat lots of healthy food. And out of curiosity, why are you leaving out the egg yolks?
I going go out on a limb here.. but id say its because the yolks are "BAD"! for thats where the bad fat lives!! Thats generally the reasoning i hear everytime. Which its obvious you already know the answer to... cosmicfish. Are you hoping for a new reason
Nah, just hoping to prompt a little discussion and use it as a springboard to correct what is likely a fallacious belief on his part. I hear about people leaving out egg yolks all the time, usually because they're concerned about all that nasty cholesterol (*gasp*) or all the "artery-clogging saturated fat" (oh noes!) that they contain. I'm guessing from your reply that you also don't believe that sat fat or dietary cholesterol are bad for you? Very likely, I'd say. If you were a hunter gatherer and you were able to access a nest with eggs in it, you can bet your favourite sharpened stick that you'd take them and eat them.
Theres so much constant debate about Yolks but the most recent seems to be yolks have had bad press with benefits such as: Reduced risk of macular degeneration Reduced risk of certain types of cancer (due to high leutin, zeaxanthin and choline content) High-quality protein source Helps curb hunger, assisting in weight loss over time Increase in HDL there are different types of cholesterol, one is good and one is bad, and the cholesterol found in foods doesn't necessarily mean an increase in the cholesterol that clogs you up HDL Cholesterol go through your body and grab the bad cholesterol and other fats and bring them back to your liver so that they can be destroyed or processed into something your body can use A study in Thailand where test subjects were given one whole egg to eat each day for three months, with no other changes to diet or exercise, saw that their HDL levels increased, and other studies has shown that even eating up to 6 eggs a day saw no increase on the bad cholesterol. I guess the only thing you need to worry about is the grams of fat per yolk.. which makes sense why Some bodybuilders take the yolks out. In terms of overall health.. Bet that Sharpened Stick for the whole nest!!
Ok mate cheers. And i do already, at least, i'm trying to. Chicken, fish, fruit, veg, wholegrains, porridge (love me porridge!but why do some bodybuilding diets list porridge as the last meal right before bed?) and plenty of milk and eggs, cottage cheese etc. i haven't bothered with protein shakes much in the past but have started taking met rx protein powder and also creatine mono tabs for the last week or so. i could list my typical day for meals but its the same as a 100s you find if you google bodybuilding or bulking diets. i just picked a healthy, muscle building diet off t nation that looked manageable for me financially. To be honest i'm leaving the egg yolks out (the dog gets them) because it says to in the diet sheet i'm using. 7 egg whites, 1 whole egg. bowl of porridge, 2 pieces fruit etc. it might sound stupid but i'm trying to treat my diet as serious as i do my training so ive followed it to the letter so far. all i wanted to know was if i'd still get the same nutritional/protein benefits from drinking raw eggs. i'm not worried about high colesterol nor salmonella poisoning so aren't leaving them out for that. nor am i worried about fat gain as i do too much training for it to have the chance to latch on. ive always been this way, a result of being hyper as a kid probably haha
Funny enough, cholesterol has been something of an interest of mine for a while now. Don't know exactly why, which is odd, but then I'm a little odd too. Anyway, I'd add a little something to what you said about "good" and "bad" cholesterol. LDL is commonly labelled the bad cholesterol, but even that is a bit simplistic. From what I've read, LDL isn't homogeneous but comes in different particle sizes. Now, oddly, the larger they are the less atherogenic (likely to cause arterial plaque) they are. For a crude analogy, imagine firing a load of ball bearings at someone at speed, compared to firing a load of ping pong balls at them with the same force - the marbles will do a lot more damage! My point being that sat fats tend to increase LDL values by increasing LDL particle size, rather than the number of particles. Counter intuitively, this means that when sat fat consumption raises your LDL it actually reduces your risk of forming arterial plaque. It's also been found that dietary cholesterol has no appreciable effect on levels of serum cholesterol. Partly because ~80% of the cholesterol in our bloostream is manufactured in the liver, and partly because our liver is believed to up or down relgulate the amount of cholesterol it manufactures in response to cholesterol eaten in order to keep serum levels reasonably constant. So yeah, we're on the same page here - eggs are good, eat them, including the yolks.
Well fair enough if you're following a pre-planned diet. I won't criticise that as I've done it myself more than once in the past. And I've just noticed we've not answered your original question about eating the eggs raw. Well here's a reason not to: Egg whites contain a protein called avidin. Avidin can bind to Biotin (vitamin B7) rendering it unuseable by the body. In fact Avidin has quite a high binding-affinity for Biotin. Biotin is found mostly in the yolks of eggs. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that if the avidin and biotin weren't naturally found in the different parts of the egg then they'd bind right away anyway. Cooking egg whites will inactivate avidin, preventing it from binding to the biotin. In short: * Eating many raw egg whites = a sure way to get biotin deficient. * Eating cooked egg whites = almost certainly ok. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor - so take my advice with a pinch of salt and a couple of buttered soldiers. * Avidin and Biotin issues aside, I strongly doubt cooking or leaving egg whites raw will make much of a difference in terms of muscle gain.
You're far better off cooking the egg. From memory, the protein in a raw egg is in the vicinity of 50% bioavailable whereas when you cook it it becomes something around the 98% mark.
Yeah not bad mate cheers. put on about 6lbs or so, gone from 14st 8lb to 15st 2lb (on bathroom scales though so could be out a little either side) but still looking lean with it. Been taking creatine for a couple weeks now too, but haven't noticed any big differences in my training to be honest, a little in recovery though. Going to invest in a decent protein powder too but not sure which yet. As for missing cardio, its not too bad, as i'm balancing it out fairly well (i think) Miss running a bit, as it's the one thing that REALLY challenges me, but i've upped the number of circuits i do for barbell complexes (twice per week, 8-10 circuits) and find them almost as challenging and i'm walking a lot more (which my dog loves anyway) and i'm still going to do my weekly walk up on the hills with a weighted backpack too and a steady half hour swim once per week to keep loose. so yeah all going good cheers mate.
