This Is The Healthiest Way To Eat Eggs

Everything about an egg is healthy — even the yolk. Some older generations may think otherwise, because the egg's golden center contains saturated fat, which was considered "bad" starting in the 1960s, according to Harvard Health. Recently, experts have agreed that the entire egg has tremendous health benefits. "Eggs are an excellent source of several key nutrients found in both the egg yolk and the egg white," pointed out nutritionist Tamar Samuels (via HuffPost). "Eating a whole egg gives us the biggest bang for our buck in terms of both macro and micronutrients."

So what is the healthiest way to enjoy this small sphere of nutritional goodness? At a bare minimum, start with some heat. According to Healthline, a cooked egg is healthier than a raw one, because the heating process makes both the protein and the biotin more digestible. A study published in Journal of Nutrition revealed that the human body will make use of 91 percent of the protein in a cooked egg, compared to only 51 percent of this nutrient when the egg is raw.

Now that we know that a cooked egg is better than a raw egg, what's the best way to turn up the heat? There are so many options! You can scramble, fry, poach, or boil them. As the Food Network notes, baking eggs or preparing them using the sous vide method are increasingly popular options, too. Unfortunately, many of these methods destroy bits of the egg's goodness in the process — for example, hard-boiling reduces some of an egg's antioxidant properties, a study in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry concluded. Methods such as frying and scrambling might not have this result, but if you're adding oil, butter, cream, or other toss-ins, you might be getting more calories than you bargained for. Plus, you could end up over-cooking them, which removes some of their nutrients, according to Eat This, Not That!

Only the method of soft-boiling an egg preserves all of an egg's nutritional value, the outlet added. You won't add a single calorie, or lose the egg's health benefits in the process. It couldn't be easier to soft-boil eggs, either: Just place in a pot of cold water, boil, then turn off the heat and let the eggs sit in the pot, with a lid on, for six minutes before transferring to an ice bath (per delish.)