Raw Eggs

Q: What is your opinion on eating raw eggs? I don’t really like cooked eggs and, of course, I’ve watched Rocky down more than a few raw eggs in the films, but I want to know if they are actually good for bodybuilding or not. If so then I’ll definitely make them a regular part of my diet.

Ernie Ortega

A: You may find this surprising, but I am a defender of raw eggs as a basic ingredient in a bodybuilder’s diet. Eggs are an excellent and cheap source of high quality nutrients that we tend to lack, as well as good protein and fat. I’m saying “good protein” because many bodybuilders eat bad or average quality protein, such as beef or chicken that is overcooked or done in a microwave, which denaturalises the protein.

Now, eggs are a food that commonly causes allergy, but that is a result of cooking them; if you eat them raw the risk practically disappears. Heating the protein in eggs causes a change in is chemical structure that often provokes allergy, so if you can’t tolerate eggs it may be worth trying them raw.

Now I know that the typical reaction to this suggestion is fear of salmonella, so let’s say something about that. Salmonella is a serious infection that is thought to be responsible for up to two thirds of illnesses each year in the United States. So why recommend raw eggs? Well, when you analyse the risk of contracting salmonella from eggs you discover that it is quite low. A Department of Agriculture study found that out of the 69 billion eggs produced each year only 2.3 million were contaminated with salmonella, which equates to a figure of 0.00003%. That means that just one in every 30,000 eggs has salmonella, so you can see how low the risk is.

As it is possible that one might consume more eggs than that in a lifetime, it is important to understand how to minimise the risk of contamination. Salmonella infection tends to affect industrially raised chickens, so if you buy eggs from healthy birds the risk is dramatically reduced. Remember that only sick animals lay infected eggs; healthy chickens are free range, raised on organic feed, their eggs are rich in omega-3 and the risk is practically zero.

In any case, let’s consider the hypothetical scenario that you have an infected egg… what to do? Before eating eggs, raw or not, you should examine them for signs of infection. Here are some tips to make sure you only eat good quality fresh eggs:

• Make sure the egg is fresh before you eat it, and if it is not then do not eat it. This is one of the best ways to avoid salmonella.
• If the shell is cracked do not eat the egg. It is easy to check this by placing the egg into cool salty water: if bubbles come out do not eat it. If the shell is porous it must be broken.
• If you buy fresh farm eggs it is better not to refrigerate them. That’s how most are kept, without cooling. To judge the freshness of an egg it must be at room temperature. Eggs opened when cold appear fresher than they actually are, so either keep them out of the refrigerator or take them out an hour or so before using them.
• The first thing is to check the eggs by rolling them on a flat surface. If they roll badly that is a good sign.
• Once you have opened the egg, if the white is aqueous instead of gelatinous don’t eat it, and don’t eat it if the yolk is not convex and firm and breaks easily.
• Also check that the egg does not have a strange smell.

What if in spite of all that you are still thinking, “What if I follow all these instructions and still get infected?”

Well, hard as it may be to believe, salmonella is a benign disease in healthy people and especially bodybuilders with a strong immune system. So keep in mind that if you are a healthy person a salmonella infection is not that significant. You may experience stomach upset and suffer some diarrhoea, but that can be easily treated with a probiotic that contains a lot of beneficial bacteria. Take a dose every 30 minutes until you start to feel, which will normally take no more than a few hours, and that’s all there is to it.

It should be noted at this point that many nutritionists recommend that you not eat raw egg white. This comes from the old belief that egg which contains a glycoprotein called avidin, which destroys biotin, one of the B vitamins, leading to a biotin deficiency. The solution is to cook the egg white and thus deactivate the avidin, but unfortunately this destroys much of the other protein content as well. Although cooking them has its benefits, the nutritional panorama is better if they are raw.

And if we take a closer look we will see that the egg is designed to compensate for this issue. The yolk contains a large amount of biotin, in fact, one the highest natural concentrations, so that if you consume the whole egg raw you will not suffer a biotin deficiency. Of course, if you only eat the whites of egg this may be a problem and a biotin supplement would be necessary.