Nutritional Value of Egg Yolks
Posted by: WordVixen in Nutrition Information, Tuesday Nutrition
The key to a healthy diet is to get as much and as many nutrients, enzymes, and other goodies as possible, while keeping caloric intake to a minimum. So why, on earth (unless you’re vegan or allergic) would you cut egg yolks out of the equation?
The fact that egg yolks are the highest source of choline- higher even than soybeans- seems to be rather widespread across the internet. And with good reason; choline supports the brain, nervous system, and the cardiovascular system. Pretty much all the biggies when it comes to your health.
What’s surprising, though, is that egg yolks are higher in almost every nutrient than the egg whites are, except for protein (as there’s more white than yolk), potassium, and sodium. If you want to see the exact chart, this site has a lot of good information on egg yolks, but seems a little biased against egg whites.
According to WHFoods.com, 1 egg yolk a day could be better for you than a multivitamin because of how many nutrients in large amounts egg yolks have. That’s not even counting the essential fatty acids. And if you think about it, what do you think a baby chick lives on until it hatches? You know there’s got to be good in there somewhere! (OK- I know that sounds gross, but it’s true. Just as a sprouted seed contains all the nutrition of the plant, an egg holds enough nutrition to nourish a baby chick until it hatches)
Of course there’s always the cholesterol to deal with, but research shows that cholesterol contained in food really doesn’t affect your heart health, and the fats found in eggs are the healthy kinds. Plus, even though spinach is the biggest source of lutein, studies show that the amount of absorbable lutein is higher in yolks- perhaps due to the very presence of that fat, as lutein is fat soluble. And since lutein helps prevent macular degeneration, well… you can see how important egg yolk is to the diet. Lutein may not remove the need for lasik eye correction, but it’s certainly useful for much more serious eye conditions.
My issue is that I can’t stand cooked yolk, or raw eggs! My favorite way to eat eggs is over medium, with buttered toast to dip into the gooey yolk. I toss the hard cooked part of the yolk, or feed it to hubby. But with this information, maybe I should try a little harder to learn to eat the yolk. Maybe hardboiled in onion skins? Not only is it pretty, but the onion skins do impart a little flavor to the egg.
It can’t really be worse than an uncoated vitamin tablet, can it?
Tags: choline, egg yolks, health benefits of egg yolks, lutein, macular degeneration, Nutrition Information
WordVixen is an aspiring novelist, health nut (in theory, anyway), and Disney fanatic. My food philosophy could probably be best described as Paleo/Primal Friendly WAPF, though some older posts have not been updated to reflect this (yet).
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Q. Egg yolk – Why are some egg yolks a dark yellow color? Is it due to their food intake, they way they were raised, etc. Just don’t know if it is safe to eat an egg with yolks that are a dark yellow in color versus a lighter yellow color. Please clarify this for me. Thank you.
Sure thing! I actually would not have known this at the time that I wrote the article, but since then I’ve actually met a dairy farmer who also raises chickens for their eggs. According to him, it is entirely (or at least mostly) down to the chickens’ diet. Chickens that are fed mostly corn and other grains will have lighter color yolks, chickens that have been allowed to graze will have darker yolks. He sometimes provides straight-from-the-farm-eggs for us and he was in raptures about 2 weeks ago that the chickens could be let out into the yard to feed themselves and get nice dark yolks. He said that sometimes they turn almost orange, which I believe as the earlier eggs were already a nice dark yellow.
I don’t know if this matters to you or not, but generally speaking, the darker the yolk the more nutritious it is. Free-range, cage free eggs are generally the most nutritious, and I personally think that they’re the tastiest.
So, after all that, yes, dark yolks are perfectly safe to eat. Now, if they’re unpasteurized then you may want to beware if you find spots of blood in them. That generally means that they’ve been fertilized. Many people prefer that for health reasons, but it’s very disconcerting if you’ve been used to pasteurized unfertilized eggs.