Over the last year I’ve seen almost every single breakfast restaurant start offering egg whites instead of whole eggs for breakfast. Whether it’s in an egg white omelet at somewhere like IHOP or fast food like McDonalds, local peddlers of calorie-laden, artery-clogging breakfast “delights” are suddenly offering egg whites as some sort of healthy and sensible alternative. So I asked this question, can taking one or two egg yolks out of your breakfast really make much of a difference or is this just another example of a marketing gimmick to keep you coming back and spending more?
First off all, lets take a second to look at the anatomy of an egg. You’ve got two parts, the egg white and the yolk. The white of an egg is made up of mostly water and protein with very little vitamins. It is designed mainly to support the yolk. The yolk on the other hand is chock full of vitamins, minerals, protein, and fat. Why the difference? Pretty simple, the yolk is designed to sustain the healthy growth of a life form while the white is mostly space filler. Looking at it practically, eating an egg white = mostly empty calories vs eating an egg yolk = chock full of the good stuff. If you are looking at it from a nutritional perspective, the egg white has only 15 – 20 calories and 4g of protein in it with a dash of potassium while the yolk rocks about 55 calories and 3g of protein in addition to Omega-3s, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Calcium, folate, and selenium.
So why do people eat egg whites only at all? Two answers; first of all, it’s good to eat egg whites if you have extremely high cholesterol, secondly, marketing. If you are trying to lose weight, or gain weight and are looking for a good source of vitamins, minerals, and calories, eggs are pretty much nature’s little nuggets of gold. They just got a bad rap due to the “low fat/low cholesterol” movement. While removing the yolk of an egg removes some fat and all of the cholesterol from the egg, it also removes most of the nutritional value from the egg as well. You see just because something is low fat doesn’t mean it’s healthy. (see here, here, and here) Interestingly, it also removes most of the flavor from the egg so most food companies include more salt, oils, and other additives, to replace the yolky goodness. On top of all that, have you seen what most of these egg white patties are made of? Here’s a list of all the ingredients in just the egg whites being served on the McDonalds Egg White “delight”:
Egg Whites Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid Soybean Oil and Hydrogenated Cottonseed and Soybean Oils, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Mono-and Diglycerides, Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate (Preservatives), Artifi cial Flavor, Citric Acid, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene (Color).source:McDonalds
To make matters worse, take the first ingredient – Liquid Margarine and see what that cocktail is made up of:
Liquid Soybean Oil and Hydrogenated cottonseed and Soybean Oils, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate (Preservatives), Artifi cial Flavor, Citric Acid, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene (Color).source:McDonalds
So taking it all into consideration, all this “egg white sandwiches are healthy” is just a bunch of marketing teams trying to figure out how to sell more breakfast. You see breakfast is the only segment of the restaurant industry that’s actually growing right along with American waistlines. My advice? If you want to eat an egg, eat the whole thing and get all the nutritional value that you should from your egg. Want to cut calories? Avoid fast food all together. If you’re looking for a way to eat healthy and eat fast food, look at cutting out the processed meats or cheeses on the sandwiches. Doing that will save you a lot more calories, sodium, and chemicals than removing the healthiest part of the egg, or skip the hashbrowns that are deep fried in oil and have less nutritional value. Enjoy your eggs!
