After the "melamine" scandal, the national safety supervision measures for dairy products have been unprecedentedly strict. We should believe that the quality of milk powder currently on the market is reliable. If people cannot yet overcome their fear of dairy products, choosing eggs + rice soup, a traditional Chinese supplement for infants, is the safest option.
The development of industrial civilization has caused people to forget or neglect traditional nutritious foods—eggs. As a result, when it comes to poultry eggs, people's associations are limited to exam scores or the bad reputation of things like cholesterol and Sudan Red.
However, from the perspectives of nutrition and safety risk, no food has yet been discovered or created that is more nutritious and safer than eggs. Therefore, eggs can be called an "unparalleled" food. Since ancient times, fresh eggs have always been the best nutritional supplement for humans. It can also be said that eggs were once the primary nutritional food for mothers and infants. If young people have any doubts about this, they can ask their elders: how many older mothers and senior elders have not benefited from the nutrition of eggs? One should not neglect the nutritional value of eggs just because they are cheap now.
In terms of the variety of nutrients and their proportions, milk's nutritional value is second only to eggs. But dairy products are the most susceptible category of food to risks of contamination. Although a good nutritional formula milk powder might be better than eggs from a purely nutritional standpoint, problems of health hazards to consumers due to excessive amounts of certain ingredients during artificial production and processing have occurred repeatedly.
Jiang Weibo believes that compared to other types of food, eggs have the highest safety. The eggs that most people buy and eat are fresh eggs that have not undergone any processing. Besides possibly some dirt on the shell, eggs do not contain "artificially added" harmful ingredients, such as melamine-based fake protein components, or preservatives, disinfectants, and bleaches like hydrogen peroxide, formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide. Residues from disinfectants used for equipment or chemical contamination from packaging materials are all blocked by the shell, providing consumers with a natural safeguard.
Eggs that have spoiled due to microbial contamination are also very easy to identify. With the exception of a few individuals who have a preference for eating rotten eggs, the vast majority of people will not suffer health harm from spoiled eggs. Even if fresh eggs are infected with Salmonella (a very low incidence rate), the health threat to Chinese people is minimal. This is because Chinese people do not have the habit of eating raw eggs, and cooking methods like frying, stir-frying, and steaming can kill such pathogens.
Eggs may also contain harmful components introduced during the raising of the hens. However, these harmful substances must first pass through the hen's digestive system, where they are broken down and excreted, greatly reducing the risk of harmful residues entering the egg. For example, in the widely reported case of Sudan Red in the past, the residual amount in duck eggs was much less than in the duck's body (in the fat). If a hen ingests too many harmful substances, it will also get sick and reduce egg-laying, so farmers will also strictly control the chicken feed. Although fake eggs have been discovered, they are extremely rare and easily identified. Eggs may also contain trace amounts of hormonal components (as was once widely publicized), but poultry hormones are different from mammalian hormones, and there is no scientific evidence to show what effects poultry hormones have on humans. Of course, there are many other potential risks that could be introduced during the raising of hens, but the levels of such harmful factors in eggs will not be higher than in chicken meat, nor higher than in other animal foods.
Regarding cholesterol, many people have misconceptions. Cholesterol is also a substance essential to the human body; it can be both broken down and synthesized within the body. Although some foreign studies have claimed that consuming more than N eggs per day on average increases the risk of XX disease, after verifying the original reports of these studies, Jiang Weibo believes that they did not consider the factor that the subjects, in addition to directly eating eggs, also consumed large amounts of yolk-rich foods like cakes and ice cream. Excessive intake of animal fats is the fundamental reason for high cholesterol levels in some people. Consuming eggs in moderation completely eliminates the need to worry about the dangers of cholesterol.