“Oh you had an egg white omelet? Those are so good for you!” Wait, what? I thought looking at my friend. I had just said that I had an omelet before my run that morning. Nowhere had I mentioned getting rid of the yolk.
“What? No just a normal omelet.” I said staring sideways at my friend.
“Oh I thought you said you had a good nutritious breakfast of an omelet and they aren’t good for you if they aren’t only the eggs whites.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yea egg yolks are really bad for you.” She said turning down the path to go to her class. I boiled through my own class. How horrible, all those years of my mother forcing me to eat the egg yolk and she was only doing it to torture me. I called the moment I got out of class angry that I had been the victim of her sadist ways.
You wanted me to be fat didn’t you mom?! How could you force me to eat those vile yolks from every hardboiled egg at Easter!
Ok so maybe I didn’t quite approach her writhing in anger, because well she is my mother and when I run out of money I know exactly who I’m calling, but I did confront her. I’m really glad I did because that is when she told me a few secrets to life. First, don’t believe everything your friends tell you especially when it has to do with dieting, do a little research yourself. And two, egg yolks are actually good for you.
So, I decided to follow both pieces of advice and went back and did some research. Turns out that although the yolk does contain most of the fat, it also contains all of the nutrients as well, if you eliminate the egg yolk, you are missing out on vitamin D, vitamin B, and iron which as a woman are all very important to your health. Sure it contains fats and cholesterol as well, but it’s better to fill up on an egg yolk packed full of nutrients and fat than it is to chow down on carbs later in the day.
The problem isn’t just in egg yolks, as women we often tend to satanize some foods and glorify others. The fact is, if it happened naturally (read wasn’t made in a twinki factory) than you can generally safely assume that it really isn’t all that bad for you. The truth is that any food when you eat just that food isn’t going to give you everything you need, you need a full plate of different foods. The more natural the better, but variation is best. If you look and your cart and you see the exact same thing as what you bought last week, try taking it out, and try something new (take it out especially if it is processed food like Ramen noodles). You can always get it again next week, but mixing it up is never a bad thing.
Of course some foods are better than others and for specifics on whether your apple is better for you than your orange you have to look at your own diet, what you need more of and use the magical powers of the internet *proceed with caution*. However, if you don’t want to walk around your local grocery store with your iphone out and ready to research everything in your shopping cart and spending hours reading the backs of packages, I have a pretty useful rule of thumb “the darker it is the more nutrients it has.” Think about it, blueberries are better for you than strawberries which are better for you then pineapples; dark bread is better than white bread; red meats are jammed pack full of iron while their whiter counter parts lack; and do I even need to mention dark chocolate or red wines. Now don’t go crazy although your dark chocolate maybe darker than blueberries that doesn’t mean anything, you have to stick with the same general food groups, and as my mom said do a little research when you can to keep you on track. It doesn’t work on everything like your green gummy bear is no healthier than your yellow gummy bear, but in general rush to get back to our lives that exist outside the grocery store, it works. Oh and look at that egg yolks are darker than egg whites.
Sources:
http://www.fitsugar.com/Egg-Whites-vs-Whole-Eggs-7291034
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