raw eggs, the oldworlds vitamin supplement?

[sabertooth]

I have been giving my children raw eggs since they were weened from the breast. Its a tradition, My great grandmother do the same thing with her own children, as soon as they were weened she would mix a raw egg in with some raw milk and gave it to her babies(she called it egg nog) My granny told me her grandfather would drink at least two raw eggs every morning. I do the same thing. this past summer when my chickens were laying I would take my 2 year old out to gather eggs and would crack the top off of one for her to eat AV style, she loves it and its the perfect hydrating nourishing snack for children.

I wonder how widespread the practice of raw eggs was in the past. We all heard of Rocky drinking eggs and other body builders of this day and age, but what about people of the old world. We watch old Disney cartoons at my Granny's with the Kidd's and nearly every one of the classic cartoons there are backyard chickens and other farm animals. The main characters seem so healthy and virtuous. Cinderella feeds the chickens every morning and gets raw milk and eggs. Fern in Charlets web gets a whole basket of eggs in the morning and the family is surrounded by tasty animals. Bell in beauty in the beast keeps chickens, and Gaston the thick headed bruit actually sings a song in which he brags brags(When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large, now I am a man I eat 5 dozen eggs so I am roughly the size of a barge) and he is portrayed as eatting whole raw eggs.) Do you think the cartoon artist were portraying the benefits of those animal foods? and why is it in every Disney movie that the poor people keep farm animals and seem so healthy. These messages often do get lost, but I believe that the farm animals give a impression of a more down to earth people who know how to live and care for themselves, and its a virtue that is often overlooked. Anyway me and my grandmother get a kick at seeing those movies and it reminds her of her own youth when she would play in the chicken yard as a child.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDMfpbdbHWg&feature=related
He is a bastard, but toward the end he leaves you to belief that his physical prowess was a result of eatting 4 dozen raw eggs each morning

[djr_81]

Myself and three siblings regularly drank raw eggs as a kid. My mother had a drink that, I believe, her grandmother used to make her which she made for us. She would pour milk into a blender, add a couple eggs, add a banana, and add a 1/2 teaspoon of Ovaltine. Blend it up and it was a great frothy almost milkshake but not overly sweet at all. We loved the drink. She called it a "Pisca Egg" (not sure on the spelling) but I can't find anything online close to that.
FWIW you could very easily make this with raw milk, pastured eggs, a local fruit in season, and a bit of honey and have a very healthy and tasty snack which was close to raw paleo (the milk is debatable).

[TylerDurden]

My parents weren't into raw eggs at all, but they were really, really big fans of raw, aged, very smelly French cheeses, as well as(to a much lesser extent) raw oysters  or  raw steak-tartare in various restaurants, or raw limpets and raw sea-urchin-eggs collected near the beach.

[Hannibal]

When I was a child I ate Kogel mogel. Unfortunately it consisted of sugar.

[goodsamaritan]

I made a blog post with video about this last year:

about my grandma eating lots of raw eggs with rice
and a popular TV commercial in the 70s: root beer with raw egg

http://www.myhealthblog.org/2010/08/25/sarsi-with-egg-root-beer-with-raw-egg/

[miles]

hydrating

Really? When I had raw eggs they had the opposite effect on me.

[goodsamaritan]

I find raw eggs hydrating as well.
I don't like drinking water.

[laterade]

Yolks alone seem to do well with me, but the whites make my mouth slimy and dry.

[sabertooth]

I will eat a couple of yolks with my lemon water after work to hydrate myself, usualy about an hour before my main meal.

I usually don't eat the whites, and will often skim out about half the whites of my children's eggs.

[Bronwen]

Apparently egg whites are high in avidin which inhibits the absorption of Biotin. So best to just eat the yolks......

[kurite]

Apparently egg whites are high in avidin which inhibits the absorption of Biotin. So best to just eat the yolks......

Yah but yolks are full of biotin, theres nothing wrong with eating whites IMO but it seems like people do better when the eggs are fertilized.

[CHK91]

I can only eat yolks now. Apparently, I have become increasingly allergic to egg white. Curse leaky intestine. I shouldn't have eaten them every day. Argh. It sucks that I'm becoming allergic to almost every damn allergenic/stationary food on the planet.  At this rate I'll be eating only meat and fat for the rest of my life.

[KD]

He is a bastard, but toward the end he leaves you to belief that his physical prowess was a result of eatting 4 dozen raw eggs each morning

the other day I ate 32 whole eggs. the very next day I attracted a small animated woman.


---
at the same time as I said here: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/exercisebodybuilding/today%27s-workout/msg60081/#msg60081

it was more out of necessity and novelty. I don't understand people ditching the whites (other than the myths), unless they are just eating a few yolks for some DHA or whatever. Seems like a pretty inefficient waste of calories, if that is what one is eating them for. Eggs probably are somewhat mediocre/problematic as foods, so might as well go with animal fat for more calories instead of tons of extracted egg yolk. how tedious too.  a dozen egg yolks is what like a measly 450-500 calories or something? I have found eating 6-12 eggs a day helpful for putting on a little weight. I probably wouldn't push it much more myself on a regular basis (although can't say it is bad), or even eat them every day 365 days a year, although I have been eating them extremely regularly.

[Hannibal]

I don't understand people ditching the whites (other than the myths)

Those are the facts, not myths.
Besides - whites are not tasty for me. Yolks - are.

[Iguana]

Besides - whites are not tasty for me.

Keep them for me, please!

[Hannibal]

Keep them for me, please!

No problem
P.S. Even the dogs on my private land don't want to eat those whites when I give them. They crave yolks

[KD]

Those are the facts, not myths.
Besides - whites are not tasty for me. Yolks - are.

ok... 'besides'. so basically what you are saying is that if you found whites tasty, you might consider the overwhelming evidence both scientific and anecdotal which suggests raw egg whites likely will not contribute to biotin deficiency or suggest any other issue (particularity in non SWD eaters and with healthy eggs),and that these are largely the same arguments that suggest all raw animal foods are problematic. Neglecting also that the opposite - if anything , like separating and excluding organ from muscle or eating only plant embryos (seeds) of fruit flesh - would likely have some deficiency/over-sufficiency element over time.

I don't have the ability to understand the taste thing myself unfortunately, yet I've now concluded based on the writings of people on this forum and a few other people I have met, that that is likely the guiding reason even when spewing other bs, which as I've said it becomes basically pointless to eat them anyway, other than just supplementally for a few various nutrients. Unless you are 100% sure of these issues, having done the lab tests yourself or have suffered greatly at this issue, perhaps you should then point out the dangers your have experienced or maybe just stick with displaying your taste preference

[Hannibal]

What I said is that egg whites do contain enzyme inhibiotrs, which are partially anihilated by cooking, which unfortunately kills all of the enzymes on the other hand. So it's like out of the frying pan and into the fire.
To get rid of the enzyme inhibitors in nuts you can soak them.
What do you suggest to do with the whites?
I throw them away into the toilet and don't worry about anything.

[KD]

heh, well whatever ethics around wastefulness is up to ones own discretion. Personally i would indeed rather toss out food if it was unhealthy/unnecessary or if I was too full rather than just to eat it over worrying about wastefullness, but then again I wouldn't buy a skirt steak and immediately throw almost half of it in the garbage.  

The issue is whether one can prove what you are saying or not, or if its just some myth floating around the internet conveniently being used to back up what is essentially issues of taste in almost all people confronted with I think 0 people here exhibiting complaints of such claimed issues. Even disregarding ethics, as I said just economically/time wise it doesn't make sense to eat tremendous amounts of egg yolks minus the whites, as the yolk doesn't make much more than half of the already fairly low caloric value of eggs to begin with for use in weight gain or performance.

I see posts saying like 12 or 24 egg yolks and i'm like WHYYYY??. its such costly and little food that way and bumps the price far beyond muscle meats and certainly fats. You are in poor company of Weston Price and some other cooked food theorists with this enzyme inhibitor thing here, unless you can prove that some people who eat dozens of whole raw eggs daily suffer from such issues of inhibited enzymes as well as the other anecdotal and recent scientific stating otherwise. The truth is - is the (particularly chicken) egg are not the most natural food, but there no way such an essential part of it is meant to be not eaten one way or the other. I would still wager based on the experiences of raw foodies - and not some studies of synthetic bodybuilders or whatever- that you are weighting way more detriments with not eating the whole egg. Once that is accepted, people can choose whatever taste reasons they like..

personally I use a few egg whites on occasion in my hair, and don't see any difference in pleasure eating the yolks then, only experience the nuisance of trying to separate them.

[miles]

personally I use a few egg whites on occasion in my hair, and don't see any difference in pleasure eating the yolks then, only experience the nuisance of trying to separate them.

Just as you say maybe a large influence on hannibal's opinion is taste, perhaps a large influence on your opinion is that you find separating them a nuisance. When I ate some raw egg yolks I had no problem. I cracked open the egg, tipped it out in to my hand and the yolk sat there whilst the white glooped away, it just seemed awkward to me to try eat the egg white, and not really that appealing. I haven't eaten that many though, so I don't really know anything about it. I just noticed you saying you found it a nuisance to separate them.

[TylerDurden]

Given that study on chicks being fed raw egg-whites, I think it's reasonable to warn against eating only raw egg-whites in sizeable quantities.  I reckon there's enough biotin in the raw yolk to counter the avidin in the raw egg-white. That said, I do seem to digest raw eggs better if I discard most of the egg-white.

[KD]

Just as you say maybe a large influence on hannibal's opinion is taste, perhaps a large influence on your opinion is that you find separating them a nuisance. When I ate some raw egg yolks I had no problem. I cracked open the egg, tipped it out in to my hand and the yolk sat there whilst the white glooped away, it just seemed awkward to me to try eat the egg white, and not really that appealing. I haven't eaten that many though, so I don't really know anything about it. I just noticed you saying you found it a nuisance to separate them.

haha, no I think most of what I'm saying has to do with people eating whole raw eggs without problems for years/decades etc...and all the criticism being dismantled easily. The fact that I find it a nuisance to process the eggs in the way is just obvious that no animal or primitive would do so. that alone isn't proof that it is bad, just added evidence to how ridiculous it is when there is no basis for it and what is wasted is equally usable food. I find oysters to be a nuisance, never said they were a poor food choice because of it, quite the contrary. The issue is the NEED to separate and eat one part of an egg is false, so therefore any nuisance, waste, is more prominent and ridiculous particularity for people eating raw animal foods FOR HEALTH and not culinary reasons. I would make the same claim if someone didn't like the fat around a kidney or something, or a kidney around the fat but claimed some other theory. Seems reasonable to me that these are poor reasons to push on others if they are just subjective choices.

[Iguana]

P.S. Even the dogs on my private land don't want to eat those whites when I give them. They crave yolks

My cat eat both yolk and white and so do I, except that I sometimes (seldom) can eat more yolks than whites. A friend, 22 years of 100% raw paleo (instincto) at the time, didn’t like the whites and she kept it for me. We’re all-different and have different needs. Some individuals can apparently deal without any problems with quite a lot of enzymes inhibitors while some other persons can’t.

Things are not simple, we should not base dietary advices on our current very partial, limited and constantly evolving understanding of the extremely intricate biochemistry and assimilation processes happening in living organisms.

You can check a food composition table and see for example that carrots contain such and such elements. Well, not all carrots are the same: there are good, tasty ones and bad ones. Why? The table say they all should have the same contents! There must be something missing in the table… Would you eat a bad tasting carrot? 

Make a juice and mix them all… hmm…Not a sound idea, I guess!

To get rid of the enzyme inhibitors in nuts you can soak them.

I never do that and I doubt our primate and hominid ancestors did (except if the nuts had fallen into a pond, lake or stream) since they hardly new about enzymes inhibitors (lucky guys!). I don’t think the nowadays-remaining hunter-gatherers soak them either.

Cheers
Francois

[TylerDurden]

Well, soaking raw nuts in water helped reduce digestive discomfort for me when I ate too many nuts at a time, so I'm sure it works.  Besides, I don't see raw nuts as being a major palaeo staple, just something occasionally eaten in the days before agriculture.

[miles]

I never do that and I doubt our primate and hominid ancestors did (except if the nuts had fallen into a pond, lake or stream) since they hardly new about enzymes inhibitors (lucky guys!). I don’t think the nowadays-remaining hunter-gatherers soak them either.

Michael said that when squirrels bury their nuts and leave them for later it's like soaking, and I think he said that humans learnt to do the same by watching them. What I wasn't sure of though: Are they buried in the shell or out of the shell?