Do fertilized eggs have less cholesterol than unfertilized eggs?

[animalover]

I was in a doctor's waiting room, telling someone about my hens. I said I did not have a rooster because I didn't want neighbors to complain about the crowing. She said that I need to have a rooster because fertilized eggs have less cholesterol. I have never heard this before. Does anyone know if this is true?

 

[emys]

...for the first couple of years, after that they just sit on the roost talking about the good old days.

 

[emys]

Sure, makes sense to me; hens living with a rooster get more exercise!

 

[emys]

She probably confused fertile vs non-fertile with free range eggs (where there is usually a rooster) vs caged eggs.

 

[makemineirish]

She probably confused fertile vs non-fertile with free range eggs (where there is usually a rooster) vs caged eggs.

I don't think she did. I have heard this from several different sources, including the grocer at Whole Foods I questioned about stocking fertilized eggs. I do not have a problem with them, but was curious about the logic and price disparity.

The articulate answer I was given from individuals that sounded knowledgable was that the yolk/cholesterol is the food source for a developing chick, and that the embryo (while microscopic) has absorbed some prior to refrigeration.

Any scientific articles that I have found regarding the subject have come to the conclusion that there is no discernible difference in the cholesterol content of fertilized and unfertilized eggs. Likewise, there is no definitive link between cholesterol consumption and cholesterol levels. Ingestion of saturated and trans fats seem to play a much larger role in individual's cholesterol levels.


I would be thrilled if anybody else has links to any peer-reviewed articles to the contrary.

I am still looking for comparison between bird species eggs. It makes sense to me that if the variety of food items afforded to free-range chickens vastly improves egg quality, the different diets of ducks, geese, guineas, etc would yield different nutritional profiles. I have not come across a convenient informational source just yet, but will be happy to share when I do.

 

[Oregon Blues]

The embryo is about the size of the pointed end of a straight pin. It's not going to absorb much cholesterol and even of it did, then the cholesterol would be in the embryo instead of the yolk, and you are going to eat both.

No difference. But I will not argue about well cared for home raised eggs being better than battery raised eggs. Maybe the rumor got started because battery hens are not producing fertile eggs, so if you buy fertile eggs, you are going to get eggs from better raised hens and not from battery farms.

If there were going to be any difference (there isn't) the fertile eggs would be even richer because the yolk has a life to support.

I can remember when the health food advocates would only eat fertile eggs because they were "live food". Eggs that were not fertilized were "dead food".

 

[KaylaW]

Somebody told me recently that fertilized eggs have less "bad" cholesterol than unfertilized eggs. So I went looking on the internet for information on this issue. I found an article abstract at

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1342207

Here's the gist:
Total fats (phospholipids) were "significantly lower" in fertilized eggs than in unfertilized eggs. If I did my math right, fertilized eggs have only about 40% as much total fats as unfertilized.

Total cholesterol levels were similar in fertilized and unfertilized eggs. But the level of LDL (the "bad" cholesterol, which can contribute to plaque building up in arteries) was significantly lower in fertilized eggs than in unfertilized eggs. If I did my math right, fertilized eggs have only about 56% as much LDL as unfertilized eggs.

So there it is. However, according to medical researchers who've really researched blood cholesterol, the big problem with cholesterol isn't how much you eat, it's how much (and what kinds) your body produces itself, and that depends on dietary factors that influence your insulin/glucagon balance and eicosanoid hormones. Medical researcher Barry Sears, who developed the Zone Diet, explains this in great detail in his book "The Zone." Sears thinks highly of egg whites but steers people away from egg yolks because they contain arachidonic acid, which can tip some people's eicosanoids out of balance. (For myself, I've found that eating one egg yolk at a time seems fine, but I feel a little "tipped out of balance" if I eat two at a time.)

 

[aubreynoramarie]

LOL. I can't imagine that adding a single celled organism floating around in your egg could effect the cholesterol of the entire egg. I suppose I could be wrong but that sounds really silly and improbable to me.

 

[TigerLilly]

The only thing I've heard of a rooster doing for the eggs is fertilizing them...waiting anxiously to hear from someone else!

 

[TigerLilly]