Dr. Conor Brady and Dr. Brendan Clarke break down eggs for pet nutrition: raw eggs are only 30% digestible versus 90% when cooked. Eggshells provide calcium but lack glucosamine and collagen found in bone. Egg membrane supplements show modest joint benefits at 500 mg daily in human trials.
Chapters
I think we're going to be missing Americans tonight. I have a feeling that they will be an hour late because—
no, no, I let them know.
Oh yeah? Yeah, people would just tune on if they don't see Judy Morgan sharing it, who's the main sharer in the US. If they don't see that, you would just turn on at the normal time.
And I, I shared it.
Oh, okay, well that's good, Brent. You are on the ball. Very good. British standards.
You've got to know that there's somebody else out there doing stuff for you.
My wife always says you're just so lucky that she looks after me. As a— it's funny, going through the airport really reminds me of how weak a man I've become. Like, I used to do a lot of traveling and all that kind of stuff, very independent, I thought. And then once you kind of— you hold on to your passport, Elaine minds all the passports, and I'm like, no, I'm minding my own passport, I'm a bloody man. And, uh, you hold on to that ridiculous misguided idea for a few years, and then eventually Elaine's minding the passport and I'm just trundling along behind with the bags. So now when I go through an airport, if I don't have her, I'm kind of like a dog lost in a— and I get nervous. I get nervous going through departures now. So I just follow Elaine. She's got everything, all the boarding passes, what time is the flight, where do we go? Okay, I just carry everything. So that's what I've been reduced to in the family, sadly. So I have been away. I went to Lanzarote for a week just to—
Oh, nice. Is that the Irish tan that you've got there? Or is that spray? Is that spray? Yeah, it did.
Yeah, a little bit of Els Can before I came on. But yeah, so bit of heat. It was very, very nice. And the Ginger one is away himself for the next 2 weeks, so he won't be able to come in. I wouldn't say his Wi-Fi will be any good, so it'll be just me and you, Ben, for tonight.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Oh, I've got to get the right title on. Oh, there we go.
Simple as that. One word. I was just saying my favorite slang word in the world is bum nuts. Aussies took a perfectly good word, short and sweet, and they turned it into two syllables. Bum nuts.
Oh, I thought I'd come on and this would be you going, oh, did you know there's—
it's the classic egg image, isn't it? Two eggs, two eggs and a hanky.
Well, they're always, always— you can't get away from it.
Anyway, we are, uh, we are Raw Pet Medics for anybody still listening, uh, and, uh, I am here with the finest vet in the world, Brendan Clarke, and me, Conor Brady, and we are here talking about eggs all tonight. I'm very excited, Bren. Also, we're on patreon.com/wildpetmedics. Any kind of help you can give us there, price of a cup of tea or preferably a pint each month, is very, very— yeah, preferably a pint, especially at Dublin prices at the moment. Check out the Dublin prices and give us that. €8 to €9 for a pint in Guinness in Temple Bar. Don't go to Temple Bar. Whoever's visiting Ireland, Mita Hogan's actually coming to Ireland soon, so I'm gonna be meeting up with her soon. Yeah, pure gin is the cheapest way, straight from Super Value in your sock. Anyway, um, so yeah, Bren, eggs. Listen, would you mind if I started off by quizzing you about eggs and checking out your knowledge?
Oh no.
Yes, go on, because you know, I think you know absolutely everything in the world, but I think you are going to struggle. I have spent all day formulating the perfect egg quiz.
And if you want to play along at home, please do and give me some hints.
You're gonna need them because I know you can't do Google there. I want to see your hands up here the whole time. Okay, this— I'll start, I'll ease you into it.
What's the forfeit? What's the forfeit?
Eat those eggs. Eat those raw eggs. Yeah.
Oh yeah, I'll eat raw eggs.
Yeah, you eat raw eggs? Gross! That is gross.
All the time.
In smoothies. Wonderful.
Just to create that creamier texture.
It's just— I like the egg white on top of a cocktail, but that is about it. Other than that, I wouldn't have much of a raw egg in my—
Oh, thanks, Nicola, for that. So she's just put Dr. Brendan Clarke, eggspert.
Oh, I actually put up a post there saying, I wonder how many egg jokes Ben's going to tell tonight. But somebody else has beaten me to it. Oh, you're yoking. Oh, that's just— yeah, Nick would love that. Nick's probably laughing. He probably just laughed over on holidays going, huh, why am I laughing? Because he just wrote it down. So, um, okay, look, here's— I'll start you off simply, okay? Um, let's say you took that egg out of the fridge and you weren't quite sure if you hard-boiled it or not, okay? How would you test to find out if it's hard-boiled or not without cracking the shell?
Floats or not.
Oh, that's not in my answer, so I'm just gonna say that. You would spin it on a counter, of course, Bren. How did you not know?
Oh, because then when you press the egg and then if it starts spinning again, the yolk's still spinning inside the egg.
Well, that's actually nearly true. I don't know what that bit is. I think that's— I don't know what that is, if that's true. But if you spin an egg, a raw egg, the yolk moves around inside and it wobbles all over the place. Whereas if you spin a hard-boiled egg, it rolls in a very perfect kind of egg-shaped kind of circle. Yeah, right.
You mean if you just sort of like roll it across the counter?
Well, across the counter, there's no wobble to it because yours is not. Yeah. So there you go.
My dogs are currently looking at me like, are you going to feed me these eggs?
When are you going to give them? So let's say you fed those eggs to them raw, Bren. Okay. And we all know that raw eggs are actually harder to digest. Than cooked eggs, which I think is very, very interesting. But do you know how much more digestible a lightly cooked egg is compared to a raw egg? Give me a percentage.
What's your definition of digestibility? Energy release or assimilation?
I'm going to say assimilation because I don't know the answer.
As long as there's no more questions, definitely assimilation, because all of the data is on energy release. So it will be probably about 30% more digestible or energy release if you cook it than if you—
Yeah, not too far off. 50% versus 90%. 90%. I mean, that's a massive, massive increase by cooking an egg. I'll do a little bit on that later on why cooking can actually help. There's a few different reasons on that. But anyway, for now, I'm going to give you a point for that, Ben. That's 2. I've got a few more to get through here. And on average, How many eggs does a hen lay per year?
Oh, good grief. Well, it depends on the lighting. Oh yeah, because, oh, because, you know, if you don't— if you just go on natural laying, that's going to be totally different to if you artificially light the—
definitely talking because we're talking artificially lit maximum laying. That's what we're talking about.
All right, so are you talking about broiler in a hut.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
With lights, not able to move more than a foot.
Yeah, you're making me sound like the bad guy. This is, this is coming from the—
Oh, what do you reckon it's going to be? Probably, um, you'll get— I reckon you'll get at least an egg a day, possibly two if you're lucky, and it'll be on a basis of probably 2 and a half months, and they'll be out and ready for the next lot to be moved in because they just run them ragged in those—
wow, they only last 2 and a half months of laying?
Oh, it's like ridiculously low.
You're serious? They don't even get a year at the job?
Yeah. And Martina, you're right, it is one a day in a normal country chicken. So it's just one of those things. But yeah, they really run them ragged. It's horrible. It's horrible. They don't last very long at all.
This is a terribly sad thing.
Oh, somebody said 300. No, you're not going to get 300 out of a hen, I'll tell you that.
Well, that's my answer. Whoever said 300 is out. Yeah, well done, Kelly. This is a UK egg industry factoid. On average, a hen lays 300 to 325 eggs per year. Which type of hen? Which breed? In what sort of situation? Yeah, I don't know. These hens apparently lasted a year. So sorry, I didn't do my research on this. I didn't realize we're going to go—
that must be a barn hen, not a battery hen.
Yeah, these are, these are, you know, these are facts from the old hen laying industry. Okay, here's another one. This, um, one last, one last kind of more in-depth one that you can't possibly know. On average, how many times do you think a hen will turn her egg to stop the yolk sticking to the inside? A day. How many times will she turn her eggs a day to stop the yolk sticking to the inside?
4 times a day.
50. 50 times a day. I mean, somebody has to be feeding her because that is an absolutely atrocious job. Okay, here's, here's it. Yes, absolutely. 50. These are good questions. Okay, here we go. How many eggs does the UK consume every year.
Sorry, go and say that again. How many eggs are consumed by the entirety of the UK population? Entirety of the UK? I would say they'll be getting on for 1.5 billion.
Not, not, not the worst guess because you're in the billions, and the answer is 11 to 12 billion eggs a year are consumed.
How much are consumed as eggs and how much are consumed processed into a load of other stuff.
I didn't look at it, I didn't look at the breakdown. I actually wandered off into some omelette-making, um, somebody made 472 egg omelettes in half an hour. I was like, 472 egg omelettes, that is incredible. Anyway, so that's where my mind goes. I think I might have ADHD actually. Uh, anyway, so, um, that equates to about 200 eggs each a year. Okay, just a few more questions left here. And if you were to lay out all the eggs that Britain eats, or that the UK eats, 12 billion eggs a year, how many times would that go around the Earth if you're laying them end to end? I just hope these are impossible questions.
I'll just tell you, they are.
Okay, uh, 7 times. Oh, 5, that's not bad. You should have surely got a point for that.
Yeah, here's— I've obviously got smaller eggs than you.
Yeah, Lancashire hens. Um, so How come the US have to keep their eggs in the fridge and we don't?
Ah, that's probably something to do with bacterial risk and how old they are when they get to the store.
Oh yes, not— that's their bacterial risk is definitely spot on. They are acutely aware of the bacterial contamination that can be on their eggs and so they disinfect them. And because it's naturally antibacterial, an eggshell, even though it's got 15,000, 17,000 pores. Guess who's been Googling eggs? So it's a very breathable kind of porous surface, but it's covered in antibacterial goop.
Never wash your eggs.
Don't wash your eggs is the tip. I thought this is cool. I hope— are people still listening? Is there anyone still listening to this?
There's 103 people.
Oh my God.
Plus those on YouTube. Interesting.
Okay, here we go. One more thing. Um, this is more of a factoid. Yolk is the Old English term for yellow, so it used to be said to be egg whites and egg yellows. So that's what— that was what the— where the word yolk comes from. True or white? Egg whites and yolk contain the same amount of protein.
Uh, it's not true. The, um, egg yolk, according to the paper that I read, actually has More protein.
Yes. Well, that I'll accept. It is on average egg yolks and egg whites have the same amount of protein, 3 grams of protein in each, which is so surprising. I literally was thinking just pure fat in the egg yolk, but actually on measures of most breeds of eggs, there's more protein in an egg yolk than there is in an egg white. And I thought, what? So you're not far off there. You're pretty—
Don't forget the egg white is actually protein keeping fluid around the yolk. So that is the only water that that developing embryo can consume in its development. So, ah, yeah, holding water. So it is effectively like a mucin layer. So it's, um, yeah, really interesting. So a lot of water in that egg white.
Oh yes, that explains why there's so little kind of protein in it, because there's so much water in it. Um, okay, last bit: cloudy eggs. Good or bad?
Oh, what, you mean cloudy as in when you've broken them and they look a bit cloudy? Yeah, it depends what temperature they are.
Oh, come on, Brad, this is not fair. Do you think we've got spanners in the works?
If they're out of the fridge, they probably are cloudier than if they're out of the thing. Now, what you've got to be careful of is as the bacteria act on the mucin, the albumin, it will go more liquid. So if you crack an egg and it's almost like watery, you know, stuff that's coming out, that's usually because the bacteria have started to have a go at the egg.
That's pretty much the answer to the question, actually. So a very, very clear, very runny egg is a sign of age. So that egg has been there for a while and the bacteria have been doing what bacteria do. So a really fresh egg will actually be really cloudy. So a fresh egg is not a bad thing. That's a really, really fresh egg. And the longer you leave it out at room temperature in Ireland and the UK, lots of people pop them in the fridge. I wouldn't say it matters a damn load of difference really, but it becomes more and more transparent and clear and runny. So when you've got a really clear, really runny egg, that's an aged egg. But so yeah, very good, Bren. You did— do you have any more? And our last one is just silly. True or false, the older the bird, the thicker the shell?
Oh, I think that's true. Do you know why? Because I think they take longer to travel down from the ovaries before they're laid, and actually the shell is effectively a crystallized structure on the outside. So if they're taking longer, then it will have longer to, to build. But interesting, I guess it's, um, it's a little bit like— or are you gonna say all of these old hens have got osteoporosis and therefore not enough calcium.
Yeah, I'm going to say the latter. I love the way you actually had an answer and an explanation for why that happened. It's the opposite. So the older the bird, the thinner her eggs.
You often will see that, actually, you know, the old farmyard hen, and you'll get all of these slight, you know, these eggs that you'll suddenly find somewhere that they Or you'll try and pick them up and they're just like got the most fragile shell because you've got some old bird and I'm afraid that's time for her to go to doggy heaven.
Come to become more dog food. Interesting. So that is good, Ben, well done. That's 12 egg questions there. So I will pause there. Wow. Is there anything interesting you'd like to tell me about eggs?
Well, actually, I think there was a really great, in the UK, really great program. Some of you may know David Attenborough and his whole wildlife stuff, and they were doing the whole birds and talking all about eggs. And there was a really useful thing on there that tells you about the development of the egg. And so I think really this is something that many of you may not know, but when the ovary produces the yolk And effectively there's a little disc on there which is the true egg, which the semen— and in some birds like albatross, they can actually keep that semen fresh for weeks, not just, you know, a few days. And the semen basically is there to fertilize that one little spot on the yolk, and then the yolk is released into the fallopian tube. And travels down. And in that process, it builds and then eventually gets to a part where it starts to release a mucus, the albumin, onto the outer. And it develops this thicker and thicker albumin around that until it gets to another part, and there is a special set of cells which then will start to deposit calcium on the outside of that once a membrane has formed. So it actually encloses that mucus with a membrane, and then what then happens is you end up with a little bit of, um, cells which plug onto the surface and develop the crystal structure of calcium on the outside. And actually, even you see these little spots, can you see the little spots on the shell?
Yeah, we can, little freckles.
So there are little pigment things that almost like a paintbrush, so this is constantly turning inside the uterus, and these little pigment cells will literally put little dots onto the shell, so you'll get little smears to camouflage the egg. Yeah, amazing development for those. So that, and then deposits out. And did you know they were even talking about which way do you think that comes out of the chicken, pointy end first or blunt end first?
If it was coming at my bottom, I would rather the pointy end first and get to the, get to the main event.
What they found was that there was a man in 1900 took a pencil and put it up and put an X on, you know, put it up the back end of a chicken.
Oh, that's a good idea.
X, um, that, yeah, just to have a little look at what was going on. Um, and what they did was found that if you did that an hour before then what would happen is that the cross would be on the pointy end. But when it actually comes out, it turns the egg and comes out blunt end first. So if you put a cross just before it laid, it was on the front end.
So there we go, spins the egg in her book before she lays it. I mean, she just— you're just causing yourself unnecessary grief to go blunt end first. I mean, just stay pointy end way. That just doesn't make any sense. Chickens didn't think that one through.
Oh, right. I'm sorry, guys. For those out there that are asking what is going on with the sound, I'm just going to check what is happening with the sound because there should be— let's see if that's any better. But we're getting a bit of reverb for some reason.
I was getting reverb. Yeah, that's gone now.
It should be fine. I've turned my microphone down. Output's fine. How's your end? Are you on the right one?
You had it down, but you came back again.
Oh, one second. And I just need—
I was hoping they didn't hear that.
I hope that that has changed things for the better. So, can you hear me now?
Yeah. No, I'm still getting feedback when I Gone, gone.
I'm gone?
No, you're gone. I can hear you, but I don't hear any more reverb. I'm not getting the— not getting my voice in my ears.
Oh, were you getting some reverb before?
Oh yeah, I was. I'm getting a tiny bit now, but not a lot. See what the people are saying. Oh, he can hack out that 3 minutes. I could tell, I could tell you were starting to sense it when you were speaking. I thought, is he actually listening to what I'm listening to?
Well, there we go. Well, let's have a look. So hopefully that's resolved it. So sorry guys if you were otherwise— um, that's a very interesting—
that's very interesting. I also like the fact that it's, uh, slightly odd-shaped, which obviously stops that egg rolling in a straight line if it was to roll off cliffs and whatnot. So it only rolls a very small amount of distance and it goes in a semicircle. So that was for birds on a hill and birds on ledges and that kind of stuff, but most birds have kept us— that's That's kind of interesting.
So the other thing that people aren't sure about, don't necessarily know what it means, okay, is this little lion mark.
Oh yeah.
Do you know what that's all about?
I would say that it's made in the UK anyway.
Oh, we're just being patriotic. This is a British egg.
Yeah, totally. Just in case you're trying to smuggle it out of the country. Yeah, we've got a shamrock on ours. No, I don't understand the numbers on it. I'm sure that I saw I saw somebody post a little meme about it recently, but yeah, what is it? What do the numbers mean?
All right, so, well, the numbers are all about which units, so which, where the egg layers are, okay? And there's a date on there as well, okay, which gives a rough idea of a best before date. Now that's best before, and that will depend on whether you wash the eggs, you know, all of the other aspects that we've just talked about, how you keep it, whether it's in the fridge or not. So there are best-befores. Honestly, that is just what it says. It's a best-before, not a used-by date.
Best before, not bad after.
So don't go wasting eggs if they're a little bit beyond the best-before date.
Give them to the dog.
They may be perfectly good. Only if you break them into a glass like so Okay. And then you end up with a horrible green runny mess. Okay. And a slightly odd smell. Don't give that to your dog. Okay.
I think that calls it a day. Yeah.
But I would say I've had eggs which have been a month beyond that best before date and been absolutely fine.
Of course. In a travel lodge.
It's amazing how well they will last.
Wow.
So the other thing that's really interesting is how many people use eggshell as a calcium supplement for their dog instead of bone material. And I just like to say there's a slight difference. If you pour an egg in a glass— I'm going to do this very carefully because I don't want to break it— and actually I have some vinegar here. Okay, then the thing is—
brought to you by Starson's Malt Vinegar.
Well, you know, it's malt vinegar. So what happens is, as you put that in, can you see the little bubbles appearing on the edge?
I can, I can see little bubbles. So Bren's putting an egg in a glass and he's covered with vinegar, and there's little bubbles appearing on the surface.
For those So that is carbon dioxide that is starting to effervesce off the surface of the egg. And I've been reading lots of people talking about peeling eggs so that they can access the membrane. But if you are not averse to a little bit of vinegar smell, okay, you can put your eggs into a glass like that and leave the shell to dissolve into carbon dioxide and water, and then you will have the egg with membrane that you can feed to your dog.
Oh, so I can't help but think I want it now. How long does this take? Like a week?
So I believe it's within 48 hours that will be totally gone. But I think, I believe you can actually use it earlier than that. So I'm going to Look, the time is. Yeah, 7:26. We will find out tomorrow. Because if it's interesting.
Yeah.
It will be there. Experiments where you peel eggs ever again.
Yeah, but I mean, people want to make stuff now. They don't want to, oh, get the vinegar out. I wouldn't mind it. Omelet this time tomorrow.
You know, this is for giving to your dogs.
I want everything now. Um, I was watching somebody— oh, I was one of these little Instagram reels where a guy was showing how to, um, perfectly take the shell off an egg and leave the membrane on it, like some sort of hot-cold water thing. So you take it out of the hot water and you douse it in icy water. I think that's most important for peeling the shell off.
So if it's cooked, if it's cooked, yeah, you can put it in a jar of water.
Okay.
Seal the top and then just shake it.
That's right. That's what it is.
And it breaks the eggshell off, leaves the eggshell in the thing, and you just pull the—
perfect.
Yeah, all the membrane is still on the egg.
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, so the membrane and the shell thing is interesting. I think, um, there's a good business at the moment in both of those products, eggshell and egg membrane. And when people are DIYing raw dog food, they often struggle to find the bit of bone, uh, they don't have a grinder at home and it's not easy to think, where do I get this bit of bone content? And people don't want to feed meat on the bone for whatever reason. So they go looking for some bone product and there isn't a very lot of suitable bone meal products out there. A lot of people are selling bone meal, but it's the same bone meal that goes into kind of pet food. And it's, you know, very, very ultra-processed stuff. Talk about Maillard reactions. You know, studies show very, very hard to digest, a lot of protein loss, you know, as you can imagine. So people go looking for a bone replacement and eggshell calcium eggshell powder is a very common product to put into dog food because everyone's very concerned about the protein or the calcium-phosphorus ratio. And this ratio is a hangover from dry dog food because if you're making a complete product, in inverted commas, particularly if you're using, you know, strange sources of phosphorus and calcium carbonate, you have to get that balance right because over time you can lead to all sorts of joint issues and whatnot. And all sorts of hormone release issues and everything. So getting that balance is really critically important in complete dry food, and people come to raw dog food thinking that it's the most important thing ever. Surely calcium is important, but I think what it— while it's a good source of calcium, eggshell, and probably a couple of minerals here and there, that's about it. But when you compare that to what bone actually is, as we keep on saying on the show, bone is far more than calcium. Bone is, you know, your glucosamine, your chondroitin, collagen, hyaluronic acid, and eggs do contain some of that in their membrane, which we'll get into in a second, but nothing like bone material. Also, egg membrane contains a bit of collagen 1, 5, and 10, but not collagen 2, which is the stuff you really want when you're doing, when you're thinking about joints, which is interesting. So, you know, also bones, you have clean teeth, they're a mineral sink. That's where you get most of your copper and selenium and zinc and all sorts. Your bit of manganese in an animal only exists in the bones. The rest of it is on the outside. So bones are really, really important. And I think using eggshell membrane, I think it's important to know it's not a replacement for bone. It's like a poor substitute. It'll do the job absolutely fine. It'll get the bit of calcium in there. A teaspoon, a level teaspoon or 2 per kilo of raw dog food mix is what people use. But as a bone replacement, it's not. It'll do the job for a while. But if you're doing that, I would definitely still, if you can, include some raw meaty bones in the dog's life. But the membrane is gathering in coolness too. And that's because a couple of studies show that you can use the membrane of an egg, which contains lots of cool stuff. I actually wrote down some of the bits and pieces in the percentage. Where did I say it? It's— so it's lots of collagen, which is like cool carnivore fiber, and that's good. And then 7% glycosaminoglycans, which is one glyco too many for me. GAGs, they're called, which is like your chondroitin sulfate and your dermatin sulfate, hyaluronic acid, glucosamine. So that stuff is in collagen, is in that little membrane on the inside. There's two membranes, there's an outer membrane and an inner membrane. Weighs about 1.5 grams, that, that membrane, which is important when you do the study. Anyway, um, they did a couple of studies. There's about 5 studies out there on eggshell membranes and joint pain, knee pain, stiffness, recovery, uh, and the first one in 2009, really good study, randomized multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled. That's a really good study. And they use 500 milligrams of membrane, which is maybe 2 entire egg membranes, the inner and outer membrane, the entire cell. So 2 egg membranes for each person each day, that's considered a high dose, by the way, 1 eggshell membrane is a low dose. So they're using about 2 eggshells per 60-70 kilo human. And they follow them for 10, 30, and 60 days. And they found that it absolutely was beneficial to them. but it reduced pain by 16% and stiffness by 13%. And I'm thinking, not bad, you know, not amazing, but not, not bad. So that's, there's a slight improvement in some of these. So I actually thought it was much more impressive than that. There was a, this is a French study and there was only 30 people as well. So pretty small, but a better study came out 2 years ago. This time they used 75 people, again, the 500mg dose, which is 2 eggshell membranes in men. And it decreased pain, it increased— they measured quality of life, but they also measured the muscle gain that the people had when they went to the gym for the month after. And the people taking the eggshell membrane had more muscle growth because they had less pain in their knee, which increases your quality of life, which gets you back in the gym and gets you back in rehab. And I thought that's a cool little addition to add on to your study, you know, that, that little improvement in the quality of it. Also, they found the results were better than curcumin. So I thought that was kind of cool just from eggshell membrane.
So was that just the membrane or was that eggs? Did those people end up eating the whole egg? Because wouldn't it be interesting? Because the majority of our eggs, as somebody pointed out, are infertile. Obviously there is no male cockerel going around having the time of his life in that.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, um, you know, sterile eggs, because that's what birds do, they will lay regardless of whether they're fertilized or not. Um, and it is, uh, a case of, um, I wonder how many other bioregulators are in the rest of the egg and how much that is a growth promoter, um, for that muscle gain rather than it just being down to the collagen in that egg membrane.
So it's an interesting observation and a guy did a study on that where he was saying, yes, is Rocky right to be drinking— in Rocky 1 he drinks about 7 or 8 eggs before he does it, which is what Stallone used to do when he was building muscle with steroids. So and they said, was Rocky right to be drinking the raw eggs? And, you know, it turns out if you cook an egg, you can you can get far more out of it. But when they did a study of bodybuilders putting on muscle, they gained the exact same amount of muscle on 5 eggs a day, cooked or raw, it didn't matter. They put on the same amount of muscle if that was their protein source. I thought that was interesting. Your man's point, I can't remember exactly what it was, but he said in terms of muscle growth, it didn't make a damn bit of difference if the egg was raw or cooked. I thought, ooh, there's something there that I'm missing. Study was quite long, quite difficult to understand.
Brings me to Martina's question, which is, what is it with sulfur in eggs? Do you know what I mean?
I, I don't have a direct answer for that. I know it's part of this kind of glycoaminoglycan kind of complex. I know this is like, it's like chondroitin sulfur and, and the other couple, there's 3 or 4 sulfates in that, uh, but I don't understand.
There's a lot of the essential amino acids also contain sulfur.
Yeah.
So, you know, there is a degree— sulfur is an important element in your health and life and development.
I bet.
So, you know, uh, remember, these eggs have all of the nutrients essential for growing a brand new embryo, whether they're fertilized or not. Um, and so they have a full range of essential amino acids. Within them alongside all of the essential fatty acids, alongside all of those minerals that are required for the essentials of life, from iron through to phosphorus, through to sulfur, through to manganese, through to magnesium. It was interesting, I found one study that went through a whole list of minerals, and I'm thinking, well, it needs all of the ones vital for life, um, but it didn't have calcium. In it. And I thought, surely they've just missed a trick. What's going on there? Why have they not put calcium in that mineral mix? Surely they can't think that it extracts it from the shell as it's developing. Yeah, any clues out there? Let me know.
Oh, I thought you were going to tell me what it was.
No, I just came across a, you know, somebody's thought that well, calcium wasn't an essential mineral to have inside that egg because, you know, it's got to develop. Yeah, so I thought that was interesting. What anybody else out there think that? I think—
sorry, go ahead.
I think the other thing that I wanted to touch on which I found interesting is this whole omega-3 and 6 eggs, um, yeah, business with— now they're fortifying eggs. And it's wonderful to think that people are out there thinking about how they can actually enrich the eggs and make them more nutritious. Um, and there were loads of studies done looking through all of the papers to compare and contrast what's going on with this. And they know that For instance, different species will have different levels of amino acids and minerals and nutrients. Quail eggs are notoriously supposed to be per gram more nutritious than a chicken egg. There are increased fats we know in goose and duck eggs.
Makes them better for baking.
Well, I presumed it was actually making it better for when the young are born that they've more energy stores. Oh yeah, but you know, you just want to cook. He just wants to make buns.
Anyway, I'm hungry.
So, but there's a lot of people out there feeding flaxseed or something along those lines, and I was really interested in this. And when they looked at the relative levels of omega-3. Great. They could fortify those by feeding the chickens flaxseed, but it increased disproportionately the amount of ALA, not EPA and DHA.
Plant omega-3.
For us as humans, we convert between 1% and 3% of that ALA into a DHA or EPA. Okay, dogs are worse than that, and cats just can't do it. So if you're thinking of feeding these, um, fortified eggs, let's call them, be aware it's actually the EPA and DHA that are really important, and you may still need to give another source such as, um, you know, krill or fish oil to supplement that correct level of EPA or DHA. Eggs that have been fortified in that way may not be sufficient. Now, there are other things that would improve those. So if those chickens have eaten lots of insect life, they've had much more time out on pasture, they've got other, you know, stuff that's going on. They may actually naturally have much higher levels of EPA and DHA within their egg yolks.
Yeah, no doubt you want an egg that's been poking around outside with access to all that. I mean, that's the dream, but that's sadly not what you get. You get an intensively reared bird.
Yeah, I love— there was a Nigerian study that looked at that, you know, that the chickens that were running around the village had far more nutrients within the egg than those that were artificially you know, bought in a battery house.
And yeah, no doubt, no doubt.
But so I think, yeah, yeah, I think that's a good question to, to ask. Thanks, Joey, from over on Dr. Judy's page. Oh yeah, trolling us right now. Yeah. So what's your thoughts, Conor?
Was the question store— how are store eggs? I mean, are they good?
I mean, yeah, are they good for your dogs?
Oh guys, eggs are just the best food ever. I mean, they are— talk about complete food next to raw milk, you know, because you're nursing animals on it for life. I can't think of any other food that might come near to this ridiculous concept of complete than an egg. And I actually sat here thinking, I wonder how complete an egg is. And as I don't have access to a formulator, but the Excel spreadsheets that people use. I have, I do have access to Katie McCall, so I whipped Katie McCall— yeah, thepetdiet.co.uk. Thanks, Katie. And when I've got any questions regarding completeness and whatnot, or, you know, I just go to Katie and I ask her, and she knows this stuff inside out. So Katie, if my cocker spaniel is, you know, eating 400 grams of raw dog food a day What would that diet look like if it was 400 grams of raw eggs per day? And in short, she writes back, fab, except that you would blow out your vitamin D levels. And I thought, oh, I never would have— I should have asked you that in the question, actually. That would have been— I would have seen if you knew that. You probably would have guessed that. But eggs contain virtually everything, particularly if you start putting in a bit of shell, you get that membrane in there. You are missing very, very little. I can't think what minerals they are and I didn't get into it with Katie, but vitamin D, if you ate 400 grams of raw eggs. So somewhere between feeding your cocker spaniel on pure eggs. And so people always say, is one egg a day okay? And generally when those people ask that question, they have fallen for the nonsense that came out about eggs in the '80s, which was a ploy to increase breakfast cereal to be eaten and reduce natural foods being eaten in the population.
So it was eggs and cholesterol was the, was the, um, '70s was go to work on an egg, wasn't it? And then '80s came along and everybody wanted to do cereals.
Yeah, no, use Cheerios. Cheerios are way better.
Sugared cereals.
Yeah, of course, of course. Eggs are terrible for you.
And so, yeah, maize flakes.
Yes. Yum, yum, yum. Um, so it took it— that, that leaves a mark in people, and it leaves people afraid of eating meat and and dairy and all the other things that have been incriminated in the last while. It's always the natural foods in favor of consuming some weird product. And so eggs have that bit of a hangover, but an egg a day for most dogs is absolutely fine. It's incredible food. So yes, yes, yes to Joey's question. Any eggs are better than no eggs. Outdoor-reared eggs will be the best. So if you can find someone with their own eggs, their own hens, that is wonderful food and you're lucky to have it. It's just—
I think that's the question, why store-bought? Eggs, you know, because it's back to washing, isn't it? And that's the, the danger. If you're, you know, getting washed eggs, what are they washed in? What are the other chemicals they may be using in those processes?
Does the egg keep that chemical out? I would imagine that that egg keeps that chemical out. You would hope that the shell and the membrane keep that out.
The more you wash it, the more you break the layer down on the outside, which is what then also means that the bacteria can get in, but the chemical can get in too. So you've got to be careful. You know, there is a protective layer on the outside of this egg which is naturally secreted as it's deposited out of the thing. But it also— the '80s brings me back to a very important reason that this little lion mark is on British eggs. Not because we go around being really super proud of our eggs, but it is actually also to signify that we have consumer confidence that those hens have had a vaccine. Now, this is not somebody coming along with a big needle and vaccinating each chicken, but actually as chicks they are fed a dropper which actually in the water they put this vaccine so that the the chicks effectively are vaccinated against salmonella, and it's just signifying that those eggs are unlikely to have a pathogenic strain of salmonella because they have been vaccinated or they are from vaccinated— somebody's not going and vaccinating each egg, but they are vaccinated chicken, so it's unlikely that they are going to have salmonella in the UK.
Yeah, that's interesting. One of the few eggs you can eat raw, actually. So, like, you can have complete faith faith, well, a lot of faith that it is salmonella-free, uh, vaccine-induced. Sadly, I thought you got rid of the salmonella in your egg chain by killing all the hens with salmonella.
Didn't your farmers have to report, um, uh, there was a lot of killing, culling, culling going on. Um, uh, absolutely, but then vaccination came in. There was no way that they could do it otherwise.
It was okay.
Lead.
Okay, and finally, what do they do with all the male chicks? Sadly, in the egg-laying industry, they love female chicks because they lay eggs, and the boys don't, don't need them. So sadly, the day-old chicks go to the grinder. Is that true? They go to the grinder, they're gassed first before they go to the meat grinder?
So yeah, they have a carbon dioxide— so basically they are put into a carbon dioxide mix, which basically makes them fall asleep. This is one of the dangers of high carbon dioxide, that you will basically fall asleep, become unconscious. And that's how they put them all to sleep without any drugs. And that means that they can then be used for meat. So a lot of— so that's where you'll find some exotics. People will have them for their snakes, etc. But actually, I've seen more and more cat owners go to Kaiserbrink, do a lot of day-old chicks, and they will use those as a treat for their dog because it's got all of the stuff that you'd find in an egg but in a day-old chick. Okay. And usually much cheaper. Yeah, that's right. That was another egg joke.
Oh, I missed it. Oh, cheaper. That's not bad. At least it's original. I haven't heard that. Um, yeah, so that is a great food source, as much as people don't want to think about it. I mean, you don't want these things going to waste. It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy because they're so cheap— or so cheap that you can't say it. Stop saying it now. It's a tragedy because they're so cute and lovely and nobody wants a day-old animal not getting a chance at life. But you know, if the eggs are— if the hens are laying as hard as Brian was saying at the start, is that much of a life anyway? Maybe they've escaped a life. But so it'd be a tragedy if they weren't used. And so if they're gassed and used in food, that would be a very high quality food item because it's just brand new, nice and clean, but hairy and feathery brains.
Danielle Gunn-Mohr said to me up at Edinburgh University, she was surprised that no pet food company was producing a mouse and chick cat diet because she said it would just be one of the most obvious diets to give for that particular species.
Because you wouldn't have a turnover. It'd be like trying to sell horse, complete horse product in the UK. Just wouldn't sell tonnage. It would sell little bits, bits and pieces. Go, yeah, horses, cows, what's it matter? But we like our horses, so it just— you wouldn't sell horse raw dog food.
We like our mice.
Are we like, uh, yeah, no, people hate mice. I, I love mice, by the way. I will not have anyone kill a mouse near me. Um, I love— but I don't live on a farm. Yeah, no, I adore them. I love mice and I love rats and I love them. Never had a pet one. Always wanted a pet rat, but, uh, too late for me now because I'm living with the—
you know when you're doing all of that research, uh, through the day and you sort of like you're Googling stuff and then you sort of like see a video, you catch on to somebody doing a video about something and then before you know it you're into that death scroll of seeing other videos related. And I saw one today of a cat that was playing with a toaster and the woman was saying, there's nothing in the toaster, leave the toaster alone. The cat's banging on the toaster and making the things, springs go up and down. I say, what's going on? Will you leave the toaster alone? Just thinking it was playing. There's nothing in the toaster. And the mouse looks at her for a moment then whips back as a mouse jumps out from the toaster.
Oh no way! And then runs off the mouse. Oh, bloody hell! Poor little mice. Do you know what's amazing? I love one of the kind of defense mechanisms a mouse has is when they freeze. You know, they run and they jump out of somewhere and they don't move, and the cat's like, where's he gone? Where's he gone? And the mouse is right in front of them, but if he doesn't move, the cat doesn't see him, and they just freeze. I've seen like mice running between the cat's legs and just not moving. And the cat's looking around for the mouse and the mouse is between his feet. Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine it ended well for that mouse, but he did. I love mice, I think they're so cute. But, uh, yeah, no, a mouse, a mouse raw dog food would be— I've thought about that. Or cat food.
Cat food.
Yeah, I'm just saying dog food out of habit. Yeah, cat food. Yeah, talk about, talk about a complete product, you know. That would be wonderful stuff.
Be a way of controlling infection. All of the rest of it. You'd have to be enriching the mouse. Of course, there'd be a danger that the cat would eat the intestines, which obviously may contain plant material, which, Conor, you say they would never do.
No, they do. I, I would— yeah, they all chicks will have nothing inside them anyway, so that's the chicks. Yeah, yeah, but really nice Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Hey, look, we better jump over to Patreon because it's 10 days out and I've got only one more thing to add to eggs. It's not even that particularly interesting, which doesn't sound like a good lure to get people over to Patreon. But I do want to talk about what is it about the cooking that makes the eggs easier to digest? So I just got something new on that. And yeah, cool. So look, thanks, Brian. That was cool. That was interesting. And we will see you next week. I don't even know what we've got planned. We never did.
Oh, come on, you do! What's next week? Because I was leading you in with the contents of the mouse stomach. We're going to talk all about fermented foods. We're going to talk to the wonderful Billy Hoakman. Yeah, who's going to be live from Pennsylvania. And green juju. And, uh, really looking forward to that chat because that is one of my favoritest things. So, um, we're going to talk fermented foods next week, uh, myth-busting a little bit about is there histamine release, you know, what's going on. So please do join us next week, um, for that. Um, in the meantime, if you want to hop over to Patreon in about an hour, you'll catch up with the extra facts, extra facts that we're going to, um, uh, reveal. Um, and, uh, yeah, give you a bit of a, um, I look into. Also, Dr. Nick has sent a video and I've got to upload that, so we're going to upload that to Patreon too. So you will get a Nick fix if you— nice, that's almost like a company that produces some other sort of videos, isn't it?
Yeah, Nick fix, that's just the sweat in a tiny dropper bottle. Um, did he talk about eggs for 10 minutes? We've surely covered— there's nothing knew he could add that.
Oh well, that'll be interesting, won't it? Anyway, so if you want a Nick fix, then you too can jump over to Patreon for his little addition post-Easter. I hope he's not filmed it in front of that swimming pool.
Yes.
Smugglers.
Yeah.
Because otherwise you might get a view of one of these closer than you thought.
And I'm off my breakfast. I can't stop thinking about Nick's Fix now. It sounds like a drug. Nick's to see you. Nickane. But we'll bottle Nick and sell them. Yeah. Right, cool.
Oh, bless you. Right. Wonderful to see you all. Take care. See you next week. And we'll be sharp then. And we'll be over on our Patreon page Please join us over there in an hour. Take care.
