Life with Josh - Josh Spaulding’s Personal Blog

These days it seems like “salmonella” and “raw eggs” go hand-in-hand. Any time one word comes up the other shortly follows. While it’s true that salmonella can be a very serious illness and it is possible to contract it from raw eggs, the chances are much slimmer than many believe and the pure proteins and nutrients your body gets from them are very beneficial!

The reason people eat raw eggs (usually people trying to build muscle) is because when heated, an egg’s chemical shape is altered and it loses alot of pure protein and nutrients. In raw form eggs provide some of the purest forms of protein in the World.

This pure protein is much more beneficial to the tissue in the human body, so muscle growth and development is accelerated (all muscle and organs in the human body are basically made from protein.)

For many this isn’t enough for them to risk salmonella, but if you’re a healthy human being salmonella isn’t a serious condition and can easily be treated. Not only that, but the risk is very small in the first place. In 2002 the Department of Agriculture (U.S.) conducted a study which found that only 2.3 million out of 63 Billion eggs that were produced that year were contaminated with salmonella. That sounds like a large number, but when you do the math you’ll see that it comes down to only 0.003%

Eating only the Whites

This is actually one thing I would worry about more than salmonella. If you do like MANY people advise, and only eat the egg white, did you know that there is a VERY good chance that you’ll develop a biotin deficiency?

When an egg is cooked this isn’t an issue, but eating raw egg whites, without the yolk, can cause serious health issues. Fortunately the yolk is rich in biotin, so by eating the egg whole there is no risk of this deficiency. The yolk does have alot of cholesterol, but it’s mainly good cholesterol and there are definitely more positives to eating raw eggs than there are negatives!

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