If you were a rat, what would you want to look like – Rat Brad Pitt on the left or Rat Charlie Sheen on the right?
It seems pretty obvious that Brad Pitt Rat on the left is frisky, happy, and healthy in a normal, rat sort of way while Charlie Sheen Rat on the right looks rather worse for the wear and does not in any way possess “tiger blood” or “Adonis DNA”.
Hold on a minute. Â Charlie Sheen didn’t really say that, did he??
Oops, sorry. Back to the rats.
Guess what these little guys are eating?
Egg Beaters Better Than Real Eggs? Â Who Are They Kidding?
Brad Pitt Rat is eating eggs.
Charlie Sheen Rat is eating Egg Beaters.
How can this be?  Why, Egg Beaters is a masterpiece of food chemistry, after all!
Developed in the 1970s, Egg Beaters has the same protein, fat, calories, macrominerals, and vitamins as Real Eggs!
Marketed as a “healthy” substitute for eggs, Egg Beaters is routinely served to nursing home residents and is a typical breakfast choice of older Americans seeking to limit cholesterol and saturated fat.
What Happens to Rats Eating Egg Beaters
The problem is when you take out the saturated fat and cholesterol from eggs and substitute vegetable oil, dried nonfat milk, additives, chemicals, and synthetic vitamins and feed it to adolescent rats what do you get?
You get little Charlie Sheen rats that look like the pathetic creature in the picture above. Â These Egg Beater rats do not develop properly and have mangy looking fur. They also develop diarrhea within one week of eating Egg Beaters and die within 3-4 weeks.
What Happens to Rats Eating Real Eggs
The Brad Pitt Rats eating eggs? Â They go on to develop properly and live out normal little rat lives.
Are you or a relative eating Egg Beaters thinking it is a better choice for your health?  Set the marketing mumbo jumbo and misleading doctor-speak about saturated fat and cholesterol aside for a minute and just look at the picture!  Make the call with simple common sense.
Doesn’t it seem downright foolish to eat Egg Beaters if that stuff can make a young rat look like that within one week?
Perhaps it might help you to know that a thorough review of the world’s scientific literature published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine in 2009 concluded that eggs do not in any way, shape or form contribute to heart attacks!
You don’t have to tell that to Charlie Sheen rat. From the looks of him, he would much rather be eating eggs instead of Egg Beaters so that he can get his Brad Pitt on.
References
Eggs Do Not Cause Heart Attacks
Morning Nourishment: Bountiful Benefits and Creative Ideas
More InformationÂ
Five Fats You Must Have in Your Kitchen
Why Organic Store Eggs are a Scam
What Oxidizes the Cholesterol in Eggs
Are Raw Egg Whites Healthy?
Duck Eggs: More Nutritious and Less Allergenic
Too Funny, Sarah!
I was in quite a crazy frame of mind last night when I wrote this post! LOL
@randydjohns Egg Beaters: Food for Fools – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/deRCa4LK
Thank you!! We are learning so much from your posts.
As my alt doc says, you can’t “make” food…real food has to be raised or grown…
We don’t eat Eggbeaters either, or any other products that are not natural, but please don’t call other people “fools”. Not knowledgeable maybe, or unaware, but not fools.
Heh heh! Charlie Sheen – an example of what should never happen to human DNA. ; ->)
I have a friend who eats egg beaters – thinks they’re wonderful. He can’t figure out why he always has diarrhea . . . . . . .
Oh dear! 🙂
That is so sad! I just wish that people wouldn’t feel the need to insert demeaning language like “for fools” in an otherwise important message. Thanks for posting.
I’ve never been known to mince words. I call it as I see it 🙂
No, you haven’t, Sarah, LOL!
I think Jan has a point. If you saw that somebody had posted an article called “Eggs: Food for Fools” would you read it with an open mind? I bet you either would skip it or would read it ready to argue with every bit of it. If the article was called “New Research on Eggs” or “Why I Quit Eating Eggs” you might be more ready to THINK about what it says and (if it did present good evidence) make a change in your diet.
The trouble with many animal studies is that they feed the rats ONLY the food being tested, not a balanced diet that includes that food. This can produce results that don’t apply to humans who eat the food as 5% of their diet. So I try to find out exactly what was done in a study before I make any changes based on it.
That said, I’ve always been turned off by Egg Beaters because they are so heavily engineered. If you believe a food is bad for you, just eat LESS of it and substitute a different FOOD–don’t eat weird fake foods! Scientists try to take out the parts they think are bad and leave in the parts they think are good, but they’re not perfect, and these manipulations can have unintended consequences.
yep it really saddens me to see some old ladies putting this stuff into their grocery cart…
but after working with a few clients recently (I just started my nutrition practice, yay!!!) people just DO NOT KNOW stuff about foods, and they have lots of AHA moments when I explain it to them..education is the key here, great you have this site Sarah!!
Congrats on opening your new practice. How did you go about getting training? I would love to be a real foods nutritionist so that I can teach people about real foods. Do you have any advice that you may be able to give to me? I’d really appreciate it.
Unfortunately, I have to travel an hour each way to get good eggs that are not from grain fed chickens and they cost me almost $6 per dozen, but I won’t eat anything else!
makes me feel so much better watching my 2 year old devouring a bowl of oatmeal (old-fashioned with milk and dried apples bit) and 2 eggs for breakfast 😀 She was hungry 🙂
Wow, I’m impressed! Not sure I could eat quite that much for breakfast. Reminds me of one of my little sisters! She’s known to eat up to 4 lard-fried pastured eggs at a time. 😀