If you are looking for a tasty and easy way to get even more nutritional oomph from your salad veggies, then look to eggs. That was the conclusion from a study that sought to find out if adding cooked eggs to a salad would increase the absorption of a prized group of veggie-based compounds called carotenoids.
For this evaluation, researchers had 16 healthy young males consume a salad without eggs and then a salad with the addition of either two or three cooked eggs. Consuming the salad with the eggs resulted in a 3 to 9 fold increase in the absorption of the vegetable’s carotenoids! Carotenoids are a large family of fat-soluble antioxidant compounds that offer broad-spectrum health protection, particularly for our skin, eyes, hearts and brains. The researchers believe the fats present in the eggs’ yolks were the active ingredients accounting for their impressive findings.
Eggs are one of the cheapest, highest quality forms of protein available and contrary to what many people believe, they can fit beautifully into a healthy diet, even for those with cholesterol and heart issues. Always choose omega-3 fortified eggs for best results.
(Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, Boston March 2015)
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