Drink Egg Whites For Your Health
Assuming you’re not allergic to eggs, there are many reasons to include egg whites in your daily diet. Here are some of them.
1) High Quality Protein – actually, very easily the highest quality protein you can obtain, even better than lean meats. There is an industry measurement called the Protein Efficientcy Ratio (PER) that gauges what percent of protein in a certain food is utilized by the body. Steamed chicken breast, for example, rates just higher than lean beef, which rates higher than plan-based sources. So which food do they use as a calibration hallmark at 100% PER? You guessed it, egg whites. This means egg whites are virutally used up entirely by the body with very little waste. With egg whites, you get a very accurate idea of how much protein you are consuming each day.
2) Complete Amino Profile – When you rely on a protein source that does not have enough ofthe eight essential amino acids, the body cannot use that incomplete supplement to build muscle. The body will try to hold on to it for as long as possible until those missing aminos come along, or else use them for other purposes.
Try this next time you’re in a health-food store: Pick up a can of regular protein powder, and hold it next to a can of egg-based protein powder. Look for the chart on each can that lists their amino acid profiles. Milk-sugar (and other kinds of) powders will have some aminos noticeably lower in content than their other aminos, if not completely absent altogether. But an eggwhite-based powder will have consistently high marks for every one of the eight essential aminos, if not all twenty-two. In fact, a shopping guideline for a protein powder is to compare its amino profile with that of– surprise–egg whites!
3) Less Processed – When we buy that hamburger ham sandwich or chicken nuggets, we like to think we are getting a good healthy dose of protein. But it comes with a lot of hazardous luggage. The truth is that slice of ham has not just been sliced; it has been chopped, cured, injected with saltwater, treated with preservatives, and sometimes ground and extruded through a factory pipe in order to obtain an appealing shape. Sure, a hotdog or chicken nugget tastes pretty good, and they do keep for very long. But for getting any decent kind (or any kind) of basic nutrition, how much protein benefit would you get from all that salty, greasy, battered, smothered substance so profoundly altered with artificial chemical preservatives and treatments masquerading as meat? Enjoy the fancy, processed meats once in a while, knowing that say, olive loaf counts enough neither as protein nor vegetable. For solid, clean nutrition, the humble egg white beats them all.
4) Extremely Low Fat – The egg white is almost pure protein (the fat and cholesterol are found mostly in the yolk). When most meats and other foods are prepared in the kitchen, there is frequently a considerable addition of fat added, sometimes solely for flavor, but also from simply keeping them from sticking to the pan. Now think about the last time yoiu had fish– was it more likely a plate of clean, raw, thinly sliced fillets you ate while it was still fresh, or was it rolled around in a dry seasoning that resembled sawdust, then plunged into a tub of boiling fat? And probably you enjoyed slathering it in some creamy sauce. Between all that cooking (not to mention the sauce), what you thought was a very yummy protein meal had actually become a very yummy fat meal!
5) What Worked For Me – How much to drink? I found that 1 egg white for every 50 pounds of bodyweight works for me. And I try to take it within 20 minutes of my workout to stay within the time window trainers say we can absorb the most aminos and other nutrients.
Still have a hard time getting yourself to drink egg whites? After separating the egg whites from the yolks, how do you drink them the first time? Fast. I like to drink mine (2-3 whites) all in one go. There really isn’t a lot of flavor to them; think of it as a thick water-shake.
Also, I prefer to leave eggs unrefrigerated, to keep them from picking up extraneous smells from other foods and spices in the fridge. Plus, it’s easier to gauge the freshness of an egg by sight when the thickness isn’t artificially distorted by the cold.
So you might not want to become a huge bodybuilder or powerlifter, and don’t think you can use a muscle-building ingredient like egg whites. But most, if not all, of us need to clean up our diet, consume less artificially-processed junk, as well as be more conscious of the fat we inadvertently include in our meals. Now grab an egg, and have a crack at it.
