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The chickens are taking over!  Ha!  As many of you know, I had the pleasure of living with a wonderful housemate and her chickens and ducks for about five months during the pandemic.  I know that many people got their own backyard chickens in the last year.  I still have at least three roosters in my neighborhood even after the one that lived in my backyard moved.  Backyard free range chickens do produce far superior eggs. 

For anything we eat, it is good to note the source of your food.  For many people, this can get overwhelming. It is hard enough to cook your own food, not to mention looking into where it came from and how ethical the sourcing was for that food.  So wherever you are on your food path, I get it.  Be proud of where you are and then when you can, try and take one step forward.  But, if you eat eggs, I hope you have a chance in your life to eat eggs that came from a chicken in someone’s backyard.  They are amazing!

So now that we have met some fine birds.  Let’s talk about the nutritional value of chicken eggs in general.  In my lifetime eggs have gone from good, to vilified, to good, to it is complicated.  And now with all of the different diets, it is even more confusing. 

Eggs are a good source of:

Protein

Vitamin D

Vitamin B-12

They have a little:

Vitamin A

Calcium

Iron

Vitamin B-6

Magnesium

Eggs have a lot of cholesterol. 

This is why they were vilified.  Turns out that our body can make all of its own cholesterol which means it doesn’t really matter if you give it cholesterol or not.  It will make its own regardless of what you give it.  If your body’s ecosystem is functioning as it should, you can regulate your own cholesterol.  If it is not, you might need to lose weight or even take medications that help you regulate your cholesterol.  But I feel like we are always talking about how bad cholesterol is, so I would like to take a minute to point out the good.  Cholesterol is a building block for every cell in our body.  It is a building block for five major classes of steroid hormones that we rely on including those that make estrogen, testosterone, and vitamin D. 

On that note: Happy Easter and enjoy your Easter eggs!