The Healthiest Way to Cook Eggs – Backed by New Science

How did a Harvard medical student find himself on the other side of the world in Pune, India, shouting scientific facts about eggs into the ear of a famous rapper? Yeah, that's one bizarre moment I will never forget. But how did I end up in that unusual situation, lecturing Akon on how to cook and serve his eggs? Well, last year I did an egg-speriment where I ate 720 eggs in a month, and it went internationally viral. Admittedly, not as viral as Akon's video Lonely, which has 1.2 billion views on YouTube. Still, the egg-speriment made me considerably less lonely, as apparently everyone wants to meet the oddball doctor who does experiments on himself for science. Hence, Akon in India. Now I get more questions about eggs than you could possibly imagine. And one question that comes up again and again, including at that party in India, is, "What is the healthiest way to cook and eat your eggs?" I'm going to answer that question in this video, but not with a one-liner, and thankfully not with a rap either. I want to start with talking about a new randomized controlled trial published in Cell Reports Medicine that's influenced how I cook my eggs in the kitchen. We're going to take a scenic route through the data, but by the end of this, I promise you'll know how to cook your eggs so that they're fluffier and healthier for your heart and long-term health. Now, in this study, the researchers enrolled 20 healthy individuals and had them eat two identical diets but cooked using different methods. For 2 weeks, they used low-heat, moist cooking methods like boiling and steaming. And for 2 other weeks, they used high-heat, drier methods like grilling and baking. So why these different methods? They were testing the formation of advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. AGEs are compounds formed when proteins or fats combine with reducing sugars, like glucose. AGEs can be formed in the body and/or absorbed from the foods we eat. Let me try to describe it in a way that will hopefully stick. The Maillard reaction is what happens when food gets that beautiful browned crust, like on a seared steak, toasted bread, or crispy roasted vegetables. But it's more than just browning. It's a kind of edible alchemy. Think about it like this: when proteins or fats and sugar in food are exposed to heat, they start to dance together in a complex chemical tango. And this reaction between the sugars and the proteins and fats creates hundreds of new flavor compounds—nutty, savory, Roasted notes, the kind of flavors that make our mouths water because it's basically nature's flavor amplifier. You know that rich smell when coffee is roasting, or the crispy skin on good roast chicken? I'm a thigh over breast kind of guy. Or the toasted edge of a grilled cheese, or the deep brown crackle of oven roasted potatoes, or the caramelized coat on a marshmallow. It's been a long time since I had one of those. Those are all examples of the Maillard reaction making AGE magic. In short, AGEs are where sugar shakes hands with proteins and fats, and they just both forget to let go. But here's the kicker and the downside. This same delicious browning also creates these AGEs, which when eaten in excess can stir up inflammation and oxidative stress in the body. So it's kind of like the flavor jackpot, but with a health tax attached. And high levels of advanced glycation end products, AGEs, derived from the diet or made inside the body, as we'll get to later, cause inflammation and oxidative stress and are associated with chronic diseases like heart disease. High heat and dry heat cooking methods produce more AGEs than low heat moist cooking methods. And yes, I'm going to get back to eggs, don't worry. I told you we're going to get back there, but we are taking the scenic route through the data. Now, what the researchers found was that changing cooking methods alone caused measurable changes in circulating AGE levels within the participants' bodies. Including compounds like carb methyl lysine, CML, and methylglyoxal, which has been linked to cancer. Now don't be afraid of the jargon. I am admittedly giving you a lot more details than I gave Akon when I met him at that birthday party in India. All I said to him was, "Yeah, eating 720 eggs didn't increase my cholesterol because the hormonal cholesterols signaled my liver to make less." Based on these data, cooking eggs with lower heat and more moisture produces fewer AGEs and, all else being equal, generates healthier eggs. That means poaching or boiling your eggs is generally healthier, all else being equal, than frying them at high heat. And I'll get into some numbers later. Let's pause and summarize quickly. So far, we've learned that how you cook your eggs and other food affects something called AGEs, which are delicious but linked to inflammation and metabolic disease. Boiling and poaching are better than frying for AGE generation. But there's more. Let's get into how to hack even your scrambled eggs. There are ways you can actually inhibit the formation of the chemical reactions that create AGEs in food when cooking, including the simple act of adding acid. Like vinegar or lemon juice. You just have to add it to food before cooking. And it's actually an eggcellent culinary coincidence because adding a dash of lemon juice to eggs can make them lighter and fluffier. If you haven't tried it, try this: combine 6 eggs with half or a teaspoon of lemon juice, along with salt and pepper, in a bowl and heat them up. Not only will the acid in the lemon inhibit the formation of AGEs, but it also helps the egg proteins form a more stable structure with air pockets when cooking and helps slow the cooking process. This results in lighter, fluffier, creamier, and healthier lower AGE eggs. Think about it like this: adding lemon juice It's like turning your pan into a culinary spa for egg proteins. Then, just fry them up on low and slow in a few tablespoons of olive oil, or if you're feeling fancy, macadamia nut oil, which has a higher smoke point than olive oil and a rich, creamy, buttery flavor. And honestly, if you want a discount code on macadamia oil, I love it, I associate with House of Macadamia, and you can check the video notes for the oil I use. But zooming out, again summarizing, to cook healthier, lower AGE eggs, use low heat, moisture, and acid. And this works for other animal proteins too, like marinating chicken or steak in lemon juice before cooking. That reduces the AGEs generated during cooking and may improve your heart health, actually lower LDL or ApoB and improve metabolic health. But I'm not letting you go yet. We have another plot twist to come. But before that, I want to offer you a practical ranking of the ways to cook your eggs in order of lowest to highest AGE levels. On the lowest end of the spectrum, we have eggs that are boiled and poached. These have less than 90 AGE kilo units per 100 grams. Moving down the ranking, or to higher AGEs, then you have scrambled eggs and omelets cooked at low heat in fats. They have between 100 and 200 AGE kilo units per 100 grams. That's still not too bad. You crank up the heat and the AGE levels can jump to over 300. Adding lemon juice using that special hack we talked about can drop that number by about 20%. That 20% drop is a number I'm deriving from data on other proteins like chicken, so take it with a grain of salt, which is also delicious on eggs. Now for some more shocking numbers. Fried eggs can run as high as 2,749 kilounits of AGE per egg. Per egg. But if you think that is bad, what do you think happens if you add 100 grams of fried bacon in its own fat? I'm sorry to tell you, but that adds 91,577 kilounits of AGEs. How crazy is that? I know, I know, you hate me, but I'm just communicating the data. I'm the middleman. That said, microwave bacon or fried steak strips each have about 1/10th that amount. So I guess bring on the steak and eggs? And between us, being realistic, I'm still going to be indulging in fried eggs and bacon now and again. Because as with anything, it's not about being optimal, but making informed choices. And in the grand scheme of my lifestyle, I personally think some higher AGE bacon and eggs won't kill me. But these data do inform how often I choose to have the higher AGE options as compared to, say, my macadamia oil and lemon fluffy scrambled eggs, which are also delicious. But wait, let's get back to the study because there's something really important I haven't told you. The study had a major flaw. They forgot to wash. No, not their hands. They forgot to include a washout period. That means participants who ate the low AGE diet first switched immediately to the high AGE diet and vice versa, without a break to reset. This can cause a carryover effect that biases results, as has been noted in prior trials. And if you want a deeper dive into why this is important, please see this video. This is a problem because the interventions can bleed into each other. So should we throw out the study entirely? Well, no, I wouldn't go that far. For one, we actually have baseline data from before the participants started either diet, and their AGE levels did drop after switching to the low AGE cooking methods. So this suggests that 2 weeks is sufficient to lower circulating AGE levels by changing your cooking methods. And More interestingly to me, and actually the most important aspect of this study, albeit not the study's emphasis, is that the participants' baseline AGE levels, when they were eating their habitual regular diet, were the highest of all, even higher than during the high AGE cooking phase. Isn't that interesting? Well, what does that tell us? Well, consider this really important fact. Most AGEs in the body don't come directly from the food we eat outside the body. They come from internal glycation reactions, when sugars in the body react with proteins and fats in the body. Thus, managing your blood sugar may matter even more than your cooking method. In fact, it certainly does. A commonly cited figure is that about 90% of AGEs in the body come from internal reactions when sugars in the body react with proteins and fats in the body. In truth, just being honest with you, there isn't a great reference for this number, so it shouldn't be taken literally as 90%. Rather, that's a rough inference from the fact that 10-30% of AGEs in the diet are absorbed and some of these get excreted. And AGE formation occurs in the body especially when blood sugar levels are elevated. Actually, HbA1c, a measure of average blood sugar you might have heard about, is itself a glycation product. It's just glycated hemoglobin associated with red blood cells. So remember this: fluffy pancakes with maple syrup might have lower dietary AGEs than eggs fried in butter and bacon at high heat, but this doesn't mean that pancakes and syrup will lead to to overall lower body AGE levels when all is said and done and glycated in the body. And it certainly doesn't mean that pancakes and syrup are a healthier choice than fried eggs and bacon. So don't get lost in the details. Eggs are a health food. The food itself matters most. But if you want to go above and beyond, if you want to join the egg elite, with me and Akon, then yes, how you cook your eggs matters too. And if you've got your own egg hack or cooking tip, drop it in the comments. Let's build a nerdy egg-loving community together, one yolk at a time. And if you're grateful I didn't try to rap in this video, go ahead and hit subscribe. Thanks so much for listening. Stay curious. I hope you enjoyed this one.