I heard the new commercial for Kashi cereal the other day that claimed “More protein than an egg” and I thought to myself “why wouldn’t you just eat an egg?”. After all you’d be eating REAL food, in it’s simplest and most natural form instead of a product made who knows how long ago, in a factory from GMO ingredients (Soy & Canola) and loads of sugar (a bowl of Kashi contains a little over 3 teaspoons of sugar). An egg would be cheaper, healthier, produce less waste, use less energy and if you purchase it locally or keep your own chickens, it’s much better for your local economy.
Here are the ingredients for Kashi Seven Whole Grains & Sesame Cereal: (Whole: Oats, Long Grain Brown Rice, Rye, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Triticale, Buckwheat, Barley, Sesame Seeds), Textured Soy Protein Concentrate, Evaporated Cane Juice, Brown Rice Syrup, Chicory Root Fiber (Inulin), Whole Grain Oats, Kashi Seven Whole Grains & Sesame Flour (Whole: Oats, Long Grain Brown Rice, Rye, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Triticale, Buckwheat, Barley, Sesame Seeds), Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Honey, Salt, Cinnamon, Mixed Tocopherols (Natural Vitamin E) for freshness.
Ingredients in an egg: hopefully grass, insects, organic grains, and lots of sunshine. It’s worthwhile to seek out a local source of free range eggs because they’re much healthier that regular battery cage hen eggs (here’s a great article from Mother Earth News about free-range eggs). If you think about what an egg is, you’ll realize it’s really a perfect complete food. An egg contains everything needed to nourish a chick. For more in-depth information on the health of an egg, read this great article at World’s Healthiest Foods.
Eggs contain: tryptophan, selenium, iodine, vitamin B2, B5, B12, mylobdenum, phosphorus, Vitamin D, lutein and they’re a great source for choline – something 90% of Americans are deficient in. Eggs contain vitamins and minerals that help reduce the risk of macular degeneration and cataracts, those that help prevent blood clots, many that are good for your heart.
Eggs are also fantastic because they are so quick to make and they can be cooked up in a variety of ways. Mr Chiots and I eat eggs every morning for breakfast and never get sick of them. Sometimes we have the traditional eggs with bacon and potatoes. Other times we enjoy them scrambled. Eggs also pair perfectly with vegetables, making it a great way to get more vegetables into your diet (something most of us should be trying to do). We paritcuarly enjoy eggs poached on a bed of kale, other sauteed vegetables, or a savory tomato sauce. Eggs can also be made sweet by being baked up into a classic plain custard or mix in some pumpkin to add even more vitamins. These little bowls of goodness are perfect for a quick breakfast or snack on the go!
Not only are eggs much healthier, at roughly 15-25 cents each for local pastured eggs here in my area, they’re also much cheaper than a bowl of cereal – especially if you pair them with homegrown vegetables. When you figure in the quality and freshness of the product you’re getting, it blows cereal out of the water!
Food is generally most healthy when it’s the least processed (with the exception of fermentation, which usually increases the availability of vitamins – think sauerkraut, yogurt, sourdough bread, etc). The protein in textured vegetable protein does not equal the protein in an egg. Maybe it does on paper, but it doesn’t take a chemist to see the nutritional superiority of an egg.
Would you rather get you protein from an egg laid by a chicken running around on a farm in the sunshine, or from soy that’s been turned into Textured Vegetable Protein: TVP is made from high (50%) soy protein soy flour or concentrate, but can also be made from cotton seeds, wheat and oats. It is extruded into various shapes (chunks, flakes, nuggets, grains, and strips) and sizes, exiting the nozzle while still hot and expanding as it does so. The defatted thermoplastic proteins are heated to 150-200°C, which denatures them into a fibrous, insoluble, porous network that can soak up as much as three times its weight in liquids. As the pressurized molten protein mixture exits the extruder, the sudden drop in pressure causes rapid expansion into a puffy solid that is then dried. As much as 50% protein when dry, TVP can be rehydrated at a 2:1 ratio, which drops the percentage of protein to an approximation of ground meat at 16%. High quality TVP can be mixed with ground meat to a ratio of up to 1:3 (rehydrated TVP to meat) without reducing the quality of the final product, sometimes improving it if the meat used is poor. TVP is primarily used as a meat substitute due to its very low cost at less than a third the price of ground beef, and when cooked together will help retain more weight from the meat by absorbing juices normally lost. (source: Wikipedia)
What’s your favorite way to enjoy an egg?
I can also be found at Chiot’s Run where I blog daily about gardening, cooking, local eating, maple sugaring, and all kinds of stuff. You can also find me at Ethel Gloves, Grit Magazine, and you can follow me on Twitter.
You cannot go wrong with an egg. I eat at least one a day, most days two. My parents have Buff Orpingtons and a Rhode Island Red and they lay the most beautiful, tasty eggs with super yellow yolks. Super market eggs cannot compare. What annoys me about the egg thing is that people are still frightened of the yolks, I want to scream when someone says they only eat whites.
My very favorite way to eat an egg is over top of stir-fried veggies, especially zucchini, corn, and onions. I fry the egg until the white is set and then puncture the yolk over the veg, it’s the perfect thick sauce.
Me too – if you’re only going to eat one part – eat the yolk. I often use a raw egg yolk when I make vinaigrette to help keep it emulsified and to add some extra nutrition. We also like to add yolks to yogurt if that’s what we’re having for breakfast. The whites then get fed to the dog.
Our dog gets a whole raw egg at least once a day as well, her coat is shiny and glossy – people often comment on how shiny she is. I’m a big believer that it’s the eggs!
Good for Lucy! My parents’ dogs get an egg as a treat once in awhile and they love it. Great idea putting them in yogurt, I can imagine how much richer it tastes.
The argument about un-processed food is true, to a point. Let’s not forget that cooking is, itself, a form of processing, and cooked foods are sometimes more nutritious than their raw counterparts. You wouldn’t want to eat raw wheat, for example, and cooking many vegetables makes a net increase in their nutritional value, by breaking down cell walls that would otherwise pass through the digestive system. If you think of industrial processing as the only kind of “processing,” then the statement that un-processed food is always healthier is probably true, but fermenting, cooking, salt-curing, dehydrating, and so forth, are all forms of “processing”.
Yes, I’m talking about processing food yourself rather than buying it processed in some form from a factory. If you can acquire your food as minimally processed and then process it yourself – you know exactly how it’s done and that it’s done to make the most of the nutrients in the food – such as sprouting grains before making a long fermented sourdough to make wheat more digestible than the wheat in Kashi Cereal.
What a great article! I’ll definitely be linking to this in my Friday Favorites. As well, please share that amazing looking bacon/kale/egg recipe that you have in the picture. I would like to eat that right now!
Super simple:
Brown bacon in pan, remove but leave grease in pan
add minced garlic (however much you like, I used 2 cloves) and cook for a minute or two
add a few big handfuls of kale cut into strips, stems removed
stir, make wells in kale and drop eggs in
cover and cook until eggs are desired consistency
Enjoy a delicious, nourishing meal!
Perfect! Easy and delicious. Our kale is just coming up (yay!) so I’m looking forward to trying this recipe.
@ Susy’s response to Becca: I think I’m going to make that Kale-Poached-Egg this weekend. Mmm!
But I totally agree, I love eggs – the people who are “scared” of it, I think, don’t eat a well balanced enough diet so they’re scared of it’s cholesterol levels. I like eggs all ways; scrammbled, fried, over-easy, as a scallion pancake… Even When I use an egg to make chicken parm, the leftover eggy-ness is fried up and given to the dogs! Everyone benefits!
The controversy went on for years about the egg being loaded with cholesterol which made it a no-no, but I think they have even pulled their horns in on that now. Yes,I saw eat eggs whenever you want them.
Our six chickens give us, on average, about five eggs a day so we eat them a lot! I alternate between having eggs for breakfast and having shop-bought cereal though.
For breakfast, I like them scrambled (my boyfriend cooks them really slowly so they’re super creamy), or lightly fried or poached so the yolk still oozes out over the rest of the ingredients – like your kale pic. Yum!
Our dog Lily has an egg most days – she “cleans up” if I drop one on the way back from the chicken coop or has it as a mid-day snack. The former has developed a bit of a bad habit though – if I don’t drop an egg for her, she’ll do her best to knock one out of my hands or off a bench if I put them down to garden, so it’ll smash and she’ll get a treat
You have a recipe for that custard with pumpkin you mentioned? It sounds amazing, and it’s just the right time of year to share such a lovely idea – please?
I have a pumpkin pie recipe that I amend to be less sweet by only using a small amount of maple syrup and by not making it in a crust but in cups instead. I just got a beautiful pumpkin and will be making a batch. I’ll have to write down my amendments to the recipe and take some photos, I’ll try to post that next week.
Your post discusses things I’ve talked about for years. Two egg whites are the same calories as one egg and the egg is so much more nutritious. Egg Beaters do not contain the nutrition an egg does and contains so many more ingredients besides. I wouldn’t use TVP – too much processing. I used butter instead of margarine – margarine has the same calories and fat but is so much more processed.
I’d rather use less real ingredients than a bunch of artificial ones.
My husband griped at me about how many eggs I eat (2 for breakfast every day for quite a while), but my cholesterol was perfect when I had it checked. I don’t eat trans fats or meat.
As a huge fan of Real Food, I would also like to turn you guys on to my friend Andrew’s October #Unprocessed Pledge: http://www.eatingrules.com/2011/09/october-unprocessed-2011/ Hope you join in!
We were actually just discussing this and will be joining the challenge.
My favorite egg is poached in curry sauce. Saute chopped onions and garlic in butter or bacon fat, add flour and curry powder and cook over low heat until the “raw flour” smell changes into “toasted flour”. Add milk while stirring. break eggs into the sauce, turn down the heat and cover tightly. After 2- 3 minutes spoon out over toast. Yum!
I know I’m coming late to this party (I jumped over from your custard post), but I actually laughed out loud when I read that. I think THE SAME THING every time I see that Kashi commercial. An egg is far better, tastier, and cheaper. Even if you don’t have your own chickens.
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