Chicken egss, was Re: High protein consumption and bonedensity

July 4, 2002

At 01:55 AM 7/4/2002 +0000, you wrote:

><><><><><><><><><><><Heidi, I have a problem with averaging in food

>processing because common sense tells me it is wrong. Have you seen

>the numbers used when averaging food products. I am not sure I can

>explain it but when the best ingredients are used and processing is

>completed under " best " conditions you get an exceptionally good product

>not " average " . And when food is consumed we don't eat a boxcar load

>(a days production) of one " averaged " food item in a lifetime so we

>may be consuming the below average factory processed food every time

>we eat it. Dennis

Oh, well, I guess that's not what I meant at all. I meant that when you

refer to a number like " 1 in 20,000 " , it IS an average (in other words,

there is no gaurantee that it will be exactly the 20,000th egg that is

a problem -- they tested a mess of eggs and that was the number

they came out with, which is an average). I can't imagine

what they went through to test that many eggs though?

My gut feeling is that this refers to confinement chickens. I get

the impression that the folks doing the testing don't have

the foggiest notion that there is a difference in chickens.

They were very shocked when they found out there

was ANY contamination in chicken eggs (they use

chicken eggs to make vaccine for injecting into people,

for heaven's sake: they have always figured they are

totally sterile). Now, about the same time, they were shocked

to find out that chicken eggs have half the cholesterol

that they thought.

Well, the time the eggs were *previously* tested was before

factory chickens became the norm. I'm pretty sure

my chickens lay high-cholesterol eggs too: you can practically

cut the yolks with a knife, they are so thick. And the

shells are thicker, and the hens are not on antibiotics,

so presumably their gut flora is more normal. But the

folks working in food testing labs are likely not

keeping chickens.

I think it's like bad-e-coli steer -- it's a product of

the growing system. I doubt any of the values

given for " chicken eggs " in the databases are

correct if you have free-range well-fed chickens.

Heidi

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