The S&A Health Report: Two of These a Day Will Keep the Doctor Away and This Is No Yoke

If you ask my friends and family where my favorite places to eat are, they will tell you some quite amazing tales. You see, I lived in New York City for many years, and you would think they might tell you stories about my regular table at the Union Square Café. Or perhaps they can remember the evenings we spent at one of David Boulet’s restaurant ventures in Manhattan. My dad might even mumble something about eating at the Quilted Giraffe on opening night and then eating there again on its closing night years later (now THAT restaurant has an incredible story). Some might even tell you about my trips to Philadelphia for dessert at Le Bec-Fin. But my true and really great friends will all smile and tell you about the places we’ve gone for breakfast. They’ll tell you about Lox Around the Clock in Chelsea, they’ll tell you about Al’s in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown, and they’ll tell you about Ruth’s in Augusta, Georgia, where I live now. But my favorite breakfast dive is in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It’s called Ye Olde Waffle Shop and it sits on the campus end of Franklin Street. Mind you, this is not a place to go with more than four people at a time… in fact, it is probably ideal with only two in your party. The tables are small and the staff young and hungover.

It was here at “Ye Olde” in the spring of 1999 that I first began to suspect Western medicine was not all it is cracked up to be.

I was sitting in a booth studying for medical school when I decided to take a break and read the recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Society. I had just finished my “dry rye” toast with eggs over easy and was shocked to find an article that confirmed what I had always thought to be true. The study showed that eggs DID NOT affect people’s chances of getting heart disease or stroke. This was a shock because the dogma then and sadly even now is that cholesterol in foods (and fat, for that matter) causes heart disease. The truth is that, all day long, your body manufactures cholesterol. It does this because every cell in your body needs cholesterol. Without it, you would die within days. Yet doctors continue to believe that cholesterol in the diet causes disease, though it has NEVER been shown to do so. NEVER! But back to eggs…

I challenge you to ask your doctor if eating eggs raises your cholesterol and increases your risk of heart disease… I guarantee that even now, seven years later, your doctor will tell you that eggs are bad for you. It just isn’t true. For a long time (perhaps since the age of 10), I suspected that eggs were healthy mainly because my grandfather ate two a day all his life. He ate them soft-boiled. And, of course, Rocky regularly gulped down those raw eggs – look where he ended up.

One fact your doctor absolutely will not tell you is that one study found that people who ate four eggs a week actually had LOWER CHOLESTEROL than those who ate one egg or less. There goes that theory about eggs raising cholesterol.

Well, there’s even better news… eggs are one of the healthiest foods you can eat… especially if you pay attention to a few details. Eggs might truly be considered a “super” food because they have many macro- and micronutrients that are well-known to promote and maintain health:

As I mentioned above, there are a few details to pay attention to when eating eggs. One issue with eggs is that the quality of the egg can vary. For example, the ratio of the so-called Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats can vary depending on the feed given to the chicken. For this reason, many people encourage and recommend free-range organic chicken products. Although the ratios of the fats in the more naturally raised birds are logically better, there has never been any good science to back up the claims. Nonetheless, it makes sense to buy organic if possible and put the odds in your favor.

A second important issue is how to cook the eggs. Don’t ever order your eggs scrambled. Cooking the eggs this much is thought to oxidize the cholesterol and degrade the potency of the other antioxidants and vitamins found in the yolk. Interestingly, oxidized cholesterol is not good for you because it triggers increased inflammatory responses… and this inflammatory process may be a critical link to heart disease.  On a good note, cooking the egg white actually destroys a chemical called avidin, which binds up some of the biotin in the egg. To cook or not to cook… ah yes… the answer is OVER EASY.

When it comes to eggs… what do I do?

Here’s to our health,

David Eifrig Jr., M.D., M.B.A.

P.S. Send me the name of your favorite breakfast dive, I’d love to add it to my list.