Are Egg Whites Really That Much Healthier Than Yolks?
The coronavirus lockdown has given us all a crash-course in cooking from our pantries and learning to live on staple items like eggs. Though they’re one of the most eaten foods in human history, we can never seem to figure out how many are healthy to eat, or whether the yolks are bad for us.
It seems like a new egg-related study comes out every other week, some of which draw correlations between egg consumption and mortality, while others find that people who eat eggs have lower rates of heart disease.
And then there’s the great debate over the health components of the different parts of eggs and whether the yolk should be avoided altogether. Endless studies and articles out there can point you in several different directions when it comes to whether you should eat the whole egg, so we decided to chat with nutritionists to settle this once and for all. Here’s what they had to say.
The nutrition content of a single whole egg is pretty spectacular.
First things first: Nutrition-wise, eggs are jam-packed with nutrients. “Eggs are an excellent source of several key nutrients found in both the egg yolk and the egg white,” nutritionist Tamar Samuels said. “Eating a whole egg gives us the biggest bang for our buck in terms of both macro and micronutrients.”
The nutritional profile of one large egg breaks down as 77 calories, 6 grams of fat and a handful of excellent vitamins, including A, B2, B5, B12, D and folate, as well as calcium and zinc.
While each part of the egg offers up different nutritional perks — whites are low-calorie and protein rich, while yolks are higher in calories and mostly good fats — most nutritionists will tell you that a whole egg is pretty much a “perfect” food.
So why does everyone try to avoid the yolk?
We all have that one friend who orders an egg white omelet at brunch, stripping their meal of much of its flavor and joy. But are they really doing right by their health by opting for the low-calorie,...
