Who can forget that scene in the 1968 hit movie Planet of The Apes, when astronaut George Taylor played by Charlton Heston yells, “Take your sticky paws off my egg, you damn dirty ape!?” Ok, so he didn’t really say, “…my egg” but that’s how I once felt when I read health books that advised against eating eggs. I loved my daily eggs, but once I was exposed to the latest scientific research on the health dangers of eggs and animal proteins, I let my beloved egg go. Perhaps you will as well, or at least limit your daily intake of animal foods like eggs, after reading this post.
It was around 1976, that I stopped eating beef and pork, but continued to eat chicken, an occasional piece of fish, mounds of cheese and cartons of eggs. Years later, I dropped cheese, tuna and chicken from my diet, but I held on to my precious eggs. I, along with legions of bodybuilders before me, had been taught that the best protein came from animal sources like eggs. Egg whites were the holy grail of proteins for bodybuilders. Egg whites were “clean” protein that you could eat as much of as you wanted. Just limit how many whole eggs you ate and you were good to go. This has proven to be “egg-headed thinking.” Forgive me, I couldn’t resist. 😄
I ate ‘em every damn day. Usually one complete egg and four to five egg whites for breakfast. No salad was complete without eggs. Even my wife thought that I ate too many of them. No one could convince me that egg whites were unhealthy until my daughter introduced me to the documentary What the Health. After watching this documentary, I stopped eating eggs the next day. That was three years ago this month. No more animal products in my diet and I feel fantastic! I now embrace a vegan diet that focuses on plant-based, whole food eating.
So why, might you ask, am I picking on eggs? I suppose it’s because eggs are a central part of most Americans’ diets. Whether as a meal or used in baking, egg eating is big with Americans. Many of us have been led to believe that if we don’t eat animal protein (like eggs), we will be protein deficient. Nothing is further from the truth. Furthermore, we’ve been led to believe that diets that avoid or severely limit animal protein, are not healthy. Another falsehood! You CAN thrive on plant protein.
Before writing this post, I watched a video on YouTube of course, from a trainer glorifying the benefits of eating egg whites. He was buff and handsome. Obviously an expert. The problem I had with his video, was that he did not support his statements with scientific research. He perpetrated many of the myths about the benefits of eating eggs. He actually said that there was little scientific evidence to support the notion that eating eggs was unhealthy. It is a known scientific fact that a plant-based, whole food diet is the healthiest way to eat.
We know that eating red meat is dangerous. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared processed meats to be carcinogenic and red meat to be “probably carcinogenic.” This was confirmed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a group of twenty-two scientists from ten countries. They considered more than eight hundred different studies on cancer in humans, more than seven hundred epidemiological studies on red meat, and more than four hundred epidemiological studies on processed meat and came to the same conclusion.
As for eggs, consuming them has been linked to prostate cancer and gastrointestinal cancers. According to the fantastic read, Eat for Life
by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, “Eating at least two and a half eggs per week, compared with eating less than half an egg per week, has been linked to an 81 percent increase in the risk of lethal prostate cancer in men.” The more eggs eaten weekly, the higher the risk.
Eggs are rich in choline, which gets metabolized by gut bacteria into the pro-inflammatory compound TMAO (Trimethylamine N-oxide), which contributes to the development of cancer and heart disease. To make matters worse, TMAO promotes cholesterol deposits in blood vessels, higher blood pressure, and inflames the endothelium (the layer that lines the internal surface of blood vessels. High levels of circulating TMAO increases the likelihood of having a cardiovascular event by 23 percent and death by 55 percent!
Before your eyes glaze over, just know that science proves, you’re better off going without (or severely limiting) animal proteins to reduce your risk of cancer and heart disease. In fact, you don’t need animal products in your diet to live a healthy life. The science is indisputable, regardless of what some buff trainer, bodybuilder, keto or paleo diet pusher tells you.
Giving up eggs was HUGE for me and I don’t miss them one bit. What made giving them up was finding satisfying, nutritious substitutes for eggs. Finding substitutes for foods you enjoy is the key to making lasting dietary changes. I now make a delicious tofu scramble as a substitute for scrambled eggs. On salads, I put garbanzo beans, tempeh or a crumbled up homemade veggie burger as a substitute for boiled eggs. Tofu, tempeh and garbanzo beans are excellent plant proteins that can be substituted for animal proteins.
No “damn dirty ape” had to pry eggs out of my hands. Choosing health over disease made the decision pretty easy to say goodbye to my beloved eggs.
#veganeating#noeggsforme#noredmeat#meatless#vegan
ความคิดเห็น