Raw Eggs and Digestion

Perhaps, this is a question for a nutritionist expert (Berardi?)

I have heard that Raw eggs, once digested, are not well metabolized because we don’t have the necesary enzymes. I searched on google, but cannot find clear info. Appart from the salmonela risk, is it better to cook them?

I am not an expert (yet).

But I do know that cooking eggs makes the protein more bioavailable.

I’m no expert as well, but I’ve read somewhere that eating raw eggs can cause you to have a Biotin deficiency. Maybe the experts can chime in here…

The whites need to be cooked to make them bioavailable.

What about pasteurised white eggs??

The experts I’ve asked in the past have told me that cooking them to a specific point makes them much more bioavailable, then the availability drops significantly after a certain point. To quote one of them - “Cook your eggs till the whites start to turn white, and hope you don’t get salmonella.”

More practically, cook them, but not to the point of dryness.

-Dan

i think ur posting this because ur too lazy to boil them (i am too), just get the egg whites, mix them, put them in a bowl and stick them in the microwave. problem solved

There are two papers written on the digestion of raw egg whites. One group of people all had a surgury on their intestines. The other group were normal. I talked with an MD about this and the people with the surgury had a bad digestive system to start with.

The bad group only digested 50% of the raw egg white protein. The normal group only had 35% not digested (65% of the raw egg white digested).

When you eat raw whole eggs the fat slows the digestion down and most of it is digested. You can try it yourself and compare the amount of gas one gets between the methods. The gas is a by product of non-digested protein and what goes on in the digestive tract.

One of the egg white protein molecules is called avidin. The avidin binds with biotin (lots of biotin). If you eat a lot of raw egg whites you will get what is called Egg White Injury. Cooking the egg whites does not eliminate the problem and depending on how it is cooked 90% or more of the avidin is denatured but not all 100% (unless it is completely burned). A long-long time in acid also denatures it. Pasturizing does not effect the avidin (eggs would cook before it starts to affect the avidin by tempurature).

The egg yolk has a high concentration of biotin. So eating egg whites with the yolk is a good thing for the avidin biotin problem.

If you eat raw egg whites then take biotin pills.

Raw eggs can have salmonela. Pasturized eggs solve that problem. If you smell the eggs and they smell bad - get rid of them! You can buy containers of pasturized raw egg whites.