Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

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I’d like the super-awesome-breakfast-combo. Yeah, the three-egg omelet with amer­i­can cheese, 3 but­ter­milk pan­cakes, hash browns, and multi-grain toast on the side. Oh, and one more thing, could you make the omelet with egg whites please?

Wait a sec­ond bro-ham, let’s see what you did there. You got the worst kind of cheese on your eggs, pan­cakes, pota­toes burned in veg­etable oil, and more use­less carbs on the side. But the one that struck you was to drop the egg yolk — to remove the health­i­est por­tion of that entire meal down the drain? Is that what you just did?

I’ve had mul­ti­ple expe­ri­ences like this. Friends who eat egg white omelets but fry any­thing and every­thing in veg­gie oil, a buddy of mine who eats four egg whites and six slices of toast (brown bread, of course) for break­fast, yet another friend of mine who politely told me that his car­di­ol­o­gist had told him so and that I would do well to heed the same advice (which was to avoid eggs). I am not try­ing to be an ass here. I seri­ously do care about what my friends (and my read­ers) eat. Why else would I be spend­ing so much time writ­ing stuff? So, in this post, I want to get you eat­ing that whole egg, yolk and all! And not just coz it is darn tasty!

Why Do Peo­ple Skip The Yolk?

Because egg yolks con­tain cho­les­terol. And cho­les­terol is bad for you.

Yes, eggs do con­tain cho­les­terol. “Aha!”, you say. “Hold your horses”, I say. Con­sump­tion of dietary cho­les­terol and the cho­les­terol you get mea­sured in the lab are not the same. Your body pro­duces cho­les­terol when you need it. And yes, your body needs it — just an exam­ple, cho­les­terol is the foun­da­tion for your sex hor­mones. For more on the awe­some­ness of cho­les­terol, click here.

Uhh, no! High cho­les­terol = heart attacks.

Then why do cholesterol-lowering drugs fail to pre­vent heart attacks? In fact, these drugs do not reduce the risk of death in 95% of the pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing healthy peo­ple! And have you checked out the side-effects — of some­thing that doesn’t do you any good?

Then where did all this come from?

Coz some guy made up stuff. Seri­ously! This the­ory, called the lipid hypoth­e­sis, says the more sat­u­rated fats and cho­les­terol you con­sume, the higher the chances of a heart attack. And guess who funded those tri­als, that led to the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion, in the first place? The cereal indus­try!

But my doc­tor says…

That just means your doc­tor doesn’t read the research all over the place, and instead believes an urban leg­end. Yes, a myth! And no, this is not some new research that I found in the 17th floor of an obscure build­ing. This was pointed out way back in 1973, and count­less times since then. For some rea­son, even though this was debunked a long time ago, this just stuck! Want to dig into even more detail?

So, cho­les­terol is.. what exactly?

• The body’s nat­ural sub­stance to repair dam­age caused to blood vessels.
• It is the sub­stance that gives our cell mem­branes their struc­tural integrity
• It helps us deal with stress
• It helps pro­tect against heart dis­eases and cancer
• Helps in mak­ing bile salts
• Acts as an anti-oxidant. For cita­tions and ref­er­ences, go here.
• More? Here you go!

Hmm, what about sat­u­rated fat consumption?

• Sat­u­rated fat reduces risk of stroke and heart dis­ease!
• Like I men­tioned ear­lier, along with cho­les­terol, they help give your cells their struc­tural integrity.
• Yes, it does pre­vent coro­nary artery dis­ease! Not cause it.
• It improves your lipid pro­file! Yes, your ‘good’ cho­les­terol is gonna go up coz of this post!
• Yes, there’s absolutely no con­nec­tion between con­sump­tion of sat­u­rated fats and heart dis­ease! Really!
• They play a huge role in cal­cium absorp­tion. So, yeah, your bone health depends on these fats.
• They improve your immune system
• Heck, your brain is made up of fats and cho­les­terol! So, yeah, keeps your brain healthy!
• Extremely impor­tant for kids, and a vital com­po­nent of human breast milk.

But I get vomit in my mouth when I eat eggs

Uhhh, what about when you shove in that slice of cake, about the size of your face, into your mouth, at that new awe­some dessert place that just opened and you JUST had to try? What hap­pened to your vomit then? Suck it up! I’ve added some awe­some ways to cook them — take your pick.

I am a strict vegetarian

If you are like my grand­mom, who doesn’t eat cake, fine. I am not gonna try to con­vince you to eat some­thing you don’t. I am work­ing on an arti­cle, just for you!

If that’s not rea­son enough, egg yolks

• con­tain choline, which is inte­gral to the body’s proper func­tion­ing includ­ing main­tain­ing struc­tural integrity of cell mem­branes, cell sig­nalling, nerve impulse trans­mis­sion, and fat metabolism.
• are a good source of Vit­a­min B-12, Vit­a­min A, Vit­a­min D, Vit­a­min E, and other B vit­a­mins as well.
• con­tain lutein, which pro­tects against eye­sight degeneration.
• Reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of eggs may help pre­vent blood clots, stroke, heart attacks!
• con­tain essen­tial fatty acids, “which is nec­es­sary for the brain and proper reti­nal func­tion in the eye, and the long-chain omega-6 fatty acid arachi­donic acid, which is required for the healthy skin, hair, libido, repro­duc­tion, growth and response to injury”.
• Add to this all the pluses of cho­les­terol and sat­u­rated fats listed above

“Fine, jack­ass, I get the idea. I will eat the yolk. Got ideas for how I can do that?”

Glad you asked. My per­sonal fave is to make some bacon, and then use the bacon grease to fry the eggs — over hard. But you can make a deli­cious omelet loaded with veg­eta­bles, or keep the veg­gies on the side and use some awe­some cheese and pineap­ples. Or you can boil the eggs, mix it up with some yoghurt! Or cook ‘em over-easy! Or you can make some del­ish scram­bled eggs. The choices with eggs are end­less. You can eat eggs 7x a week and never prep them the same way! So, what are your favourite ways to eat eggs? And hey, if you still have ques­tions, ask away!

Update: How much to eat? 15–20 eggs a week is a good tar­get, espe­cially if you do not con­sume meat. I nor­mally make 4 fried eggs, or a 4-egg omelette. Do that 5x a week, and you got your weekly quota.

Have a good week­end! Am gonna go play some FIFA now.

Ooooh, don’t for­get. Don’t keep all this awe­some­ness to your­self — share it please! Thank you, come again.