Egg Survey
Question for you all, and I'm going to limit this to the 40+ members of the audience (or if your parents really did just ignore the egg/cholesterol scares).
When you were a kid, say in the 4-12 year old range, did you:
- Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?
- If so, how many?
- Eat eggs for protein at other meals?
- If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast?
- How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid?
Feel free to add other details. Thanks in advance for participating!
Comments
Another egg question I would like to see answered: what part of the egg do you throw away? The white or the yolk? When I did Weight Watchers, they encouraged us to throw away the yolk and only eat the white. Many in the Paleo world advocate eating the yolk and throwing away the white. Me, I eat the whole egg now, after trying both egg whites (yuck!) and yolks. It's real food, after all.
When I was older, I'd get two scrambled or fried eggs with toast and juice or cafe au lait/tea with milk for breakfast on days I didn't have cereal (I liked sugary crap kinds as a kid). I will note I wasn't chubby when I just ate eggs. The sugary crap cereal sprees came along, oh, as I got a bit chubbier. Weekends we might have omelettes. Non egg breakfasts that were cooked (not out of a box or just break with butter) were pancakes or hot corn meal mush--generally weekends/non-work days.
I have eggs for breakfast every day. I like eggs. :D The only time I don't have eggs for bkfst these days is if I get up very late and end up eating lunch or dinner type food for breakfast cause hubby is eating lunch (not bkfst) on a weekend.
I'll add my dad loved fried eggs on rice, so that was sometimes a lunch or dinner item.
So hopefully that helps clear it up that there was a lot of variability. Some times it might have been as much as 6 or 7 eggs a week...other times none at all...but they definitely were a staple food with no restrictions or alterations.
Most days mom would fix soft boiled eggs for us kids and we'd dip in a strip of toast. That was a go-to breakfast for many years; alternated with French toast/pancakes. (Eggs there, too)
Being Catholic we'd also eat eggs most Friday dinners.
It's hard to estimate but I'd guess I ate +/- 8 alone and quite a few more in recipes. Maybe a dozen a week.
**There was a family farm just down the road. Mom would walk us there on Saturday to get eggs, milk and cream. She has fond memories of those trips although I'm guessing age has softened the edges a bit. There were five kids so it must have been a chore at the time.
My mom and dad ate eggs regularly on weekends for breakfast, usually with some spam, baloney or vienna sausages on the side along with rice (they were from Hawaii).
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes
If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast? Not really, at least on week days
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? 2-4
Now I eat a lot more eggs. Some weeks the amount might have been only 3, but I'm sure in some was as high as 20.
In the periods where I want to lose, or at least be sure to not gain, so a lot of the time, I scramble 2 whole eggs with 175ml (what's that, 3/4° of a cup?) of egg-whites.
On average each "other day".
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? No
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? 0-2
Once in a while a Spanish omelete for dinner.
But I do remember that we ate eggs for breakfast, sunny-side up, because I remember the phrase, "sunny-side up" and what the eggs looked like, more than what they tasted like, because it really did look like a little sun.
I began to cook early. One day I made a mistake and dropped the egg back onto the griddle on its sunny side. I was taught by my father that this was no mistake, it was an 'over-easy.' And that's what I ate afterwards: eggs over easy. Probably one a day. I was very proud of the fact that I could make an egg "over easy."
We never ate them for dinner. I remember as a kid being very surprised that you "could" eat eggs for dinner, and then I realized that you could anything for any meal.
" a raw egg yolk with grape juice to give me as a snack. (It sounds revolting to me now, but as a kid, I loved it.)"
Ha. I love to hear about how people get trained to love this, and not that.
This is my first post here Evelyn. We've crossed swords on Stephan's blog once or twice. For what it's worth, I've learned a lot from reading here, which I've done quite a bit. I don't agree with all of your conclusions, but on the whole your approach strikes me as inquisitive and measured. I have not enjoyed observing recent events if you know what I mean and I've been meaning to send you my best wishes, which I now do.
As Winston Churchill was fond of saying (and in England it's not in the least bit offensive): "Keep buggering on!"
Rarely ate whole eggs An early memory of bits of fried bread dipped into my fathers yolks from his cooked Sunday breakfast. (NB rationing of eggs finished when I was a year old in 1953 but I suspect there was a residual influence)
?-12
Remember boiled egg for Saturday tea .0ne per week with 'soldiers'
Eggs were used in fairy cakes/victoria sandwiches for party and Sunday teas.
12-18
Memory loss, didn't really like them don't think I ate many.
18 onwards
Found that they were cheap and learned to like them a bit better. Used a lot during college years and early years of marriage.
By first child egg yolk was suggested as an important weaning food at 6 months because of the iron.
Once in awhile, we use eggs as a condiment for certain Chinese dishes (egg with beef and tomato). But this didn't happen with any regularity. And egg was never the main source of protein for dinner.
So I probably rarely, if ever, exceeded 4-5 eggs/week. And most of that consumption would occur on the weekend.
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?
Rarely. I didn't mind them I just found cereal and toast more convenient.
If so, how many?
I had strips of bread strip soldiers dipped in soft boiled eggs probably once every few months.
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Rarely. They were a bit of a pain to prepare or cook compared to cereal, sandwiches or other snacks. And I never overly enjoyed them that much anyway. Sometimes we had in salads though. We were never not allowed them through fear of cholesterol though. My parents never cared about that stuff, we always had full-cream milk, yogurt, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEXvnSb0An4&feature=plcp
so, mostly eggs were eaten regularly only on week-end breakfast;
2 - 5 eggs per person a week is my guess;
eggs could be added as a part of a recipe, no one thought about the amount of protein;
We occasionally had eggs for dinner with pancakes and sausage, but that was a special occasion not routine.
Ate eggs sunny side up, hardboiled, soft boiled, scrambled, omelete, a type of custard with whipped eggwhites floating on top.
Eggs in meatloaf, both in the mixture and hardboiled ones in the centre, scotch eggs, egg salad sandwiches, casino eggs, eggs in a cauliflower dish that also contained lots of sour cream, Eastern European type egg dishes like Galina also reported. So one meal per week other than breakfast would have had a significant contribution of eggs as protein.
Probably in total, was consuming 6-8 eggs per week.
But that was before eggs were flagged as a dangerous source of cholesterol, so I don't think my Mother would have had any reason to avoid them. I do remember that Deviled Eggs were served on special occasions, and egg salad sandwiches would make an appearance on occasion.
During warm weather months, cold potato, egg and ham salads were probably a weekly occurance for supper, but not served on a day when we had eggs for breakfast. I mainly remember eating egg salad sandwiches after Easter (all those dyed, hardboiled eggs were not to be wasted!) and turkey and egg salad sandwiches after Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Speaking of holidays, around Christmas and New Year's, my mother also made a wonderful ice cream egg nog recipe that included raw egg yolks in its ingredients. Truly delicious.
When anyone was ill, an egg "cooked to order", along with weak tea and lightly buttered toast, was always encouraged as a good, recuperative meal. Or spaghetti, coated with raw egg yolk and butter.
I'd say most weeks I ate four or five eggs, with the occasional week when it might have been as many as eight.
I'm glad you asked the question, Evelyn. I've enjoyed my trip down memory lane.
Real sour cream (up to 30% fat content)can be found in Toronto, but most of what's available is adulterated. Imagine: low fat sour cream! Atrocious and pointless.
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No, but we did on weekends. Weekday breakfast for me was usually a piece of toast with peanut butter, some fresh fruit or applesauce, and a glass of milk. Dad cooked eggs for breakfast on the weekends, or else we made pancakes, both were served with sausage or bacon.
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes. Hard-boiled eggs, Egg salad, sometimes scrambled for supper, etc.
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? Probably 7-8, it's really hard to know for sure.
I do remember that my parents bought eggs from a local farm (because we got to feed broken ones to the pigs at the farm next door), as well as milk from a local dairy (which went out of business in the early 80s, I believe). My parents always bought whole milk until they went on a low-fat kick to try to help my dad lose weight (which didn't work). I think they limited eggs at that point, too, but not before.
Learned something new -- folks dip "soldiers" into egg yolk. I was about to ask at the second mention, but then they were described as bread strips which was my guess.
Now I eat a diet low in carbohydrates, for that reason sometimes I make a Russian-style potato salad minus potatoes. It contains enough ingredients to keep the taste. Besides the ingredients you mentioned it also contains chopped baloney or chicken meat, cooked carrot, chopped or green onion, fresh cucumber to the addition of pickled one. My potato-less version contains an extra egg.
One of variation of sunny-side-up dish - it is made with slices of salted pork fat, sauteed onions and fried in a pork fat sourdough rye bread. It is also very popular to make fried sunny eggs with tomatoes, onions, bacon and cilantro. It is a week-end meal for me and my husband now.
The sour-cream with highest fat content (30%) is imported to Russia from Finland now. Normal sour-cream is 20% fat ,not pasteurized.
If so, how many? 2 (so, at most 4 per week)
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes. Hard boiled and Deviled Eggs as a lunch item. Eggs in Tuna Salad.
If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast? not usually on the same day.
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? At most 6 or 8, not counting what went into cooking cakes, puddings & cookies.
It is amazing to watch the changes in the perception of what is considered to be healthy. When I was growing-up, everybody was afraid of "spoiling" one's stomach with a wrong food or from not eating regularly. It was the main general health concern besides avoiding a flue. High blood pressure, ischemia, strokes were considered to be an unavoidable part of an aging. Spicy, cold , fried, smoked food was believed to cause gastritis which would lead to stomach ulcer which would led to a cancer. No one thought about cardiovascular deceases could be the result of eating regular foods. We knew that fat people were less healthy all over, but they were believed to consume too much of treats mostly sweets instead of eating 3 square meals and an obligatory soup ones a day. So, salted pork fat was a normal everyday food, but smoked bacon or sausage were more sparingly eaten, sour cream was a staple, but mayo was not or mixed with a sour-cream. Dietetic food was a bland one like soups without tomatoes, warm gruels, especially oatmeal and cream of wheat(cold cereals with hard flakes would be frown upon), mashed potatoes, country cheese with sour-cream, eggs, especially soft-boiled, omelets ,boiled or steamed meat, salads with sour-cream or an olive oil, steam fish with white souse. Spices , food with tomatoes, fried food, anything with vinegar or tomato paste, smoked deli meats , canned food was in a dangerous category. Adults didn't give children snacks , especially sweets between meals in order to preserve their appetite, children were encouraged to run around mostly for the same purpose - to improve their appetite. My grandma thought that thin children were a disgrace for their parents, but I don't remember a fat child in my class.
(Yeah, I'm a tiny bit aggravated by all of the nagging, even all of these years later.)
She really did nag us all to heck.
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?
Never ate eggs till I became an adult and went to university because eggs, like meat and fish, were not part of our diet.
If so, how many?
NA (not applicable :)
Eat eggs for protein at other meals?
NA
If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast?
NA
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid?
Zero.
Well, the occasional cakes we bought from bakeries in my boyhood might have contained eggs, but cake eating was a very, very rare affair then. When I went to the engineering school, I had to stay away from from home in the hostel. Tried eggs then, mostly in the form of highly spiced omelet. No disliking or special liking. Since there were many other tasty things to eat, eggs were very low priority and might have eaten once in a blue moon, say 5 or 6 times a year. Recently (a couple of years ago) tried to revive eating eggs, especially the "omega 3 enriched" ones but wife was very reluctant so the egg eating program has practically been dropped.
I don't remember my parents, or anyone else for that matter, discussing cholesterol in those days. Awareness of cholesterol was dim and we did not seem to bother about it in that distant past :)
Regards,
Rad
I've been thinking recently that the year round availability of foods that used to be available only seasonally is probably not really such a great thing. There's nothing 'special' anymore, and most foods that had great flavour because they were fresh from the farm are bland and have been in transit for days or even weeks.
In August, we'd actually have some meals that consisted of nothing more than corn on the cob and watermelon. When plums were ripe, we'd have dumplings or ravioli with plum in them. Fresh green peas, green beans, ripe tomatoes, peaches, apricots, all these things were anticipated and enjoyed. Sometimes I remember stuffing myself with delicious fruit and then for the rest of the year there wouldn't be any. Today the supermarkets carry everything all the time. It's no wonder that people are so faddy about food.
My mom didn't have many health concerns about food and likely not eggs either, although she did not buy junk food or soda it was mostly because she regarded these as being expensive. If we wanted food between meals, an apple or piece of cheese or peanut-butter cracker or hard boiled egg from the fridge would have been offered as a snack, and still are at her house. She did have a general idea that sugar and fat were not good for you, but didn't bother with nutrition labels, and avoided things that were visibly "artificial". So we tended to get cereals that had the appearance of being healthy -- NO cool chocolately or multicolored stuff with marshmallows!! but in retrospect were nutritionally exactly the same (especially because even if we had plain Cheerios we put spoonfuls of sugar on it.)
She has only become concerned about eggs in the last two years because she has slightly elevated cholesterol and blood pressure and her doctor told her she needs to do something about it. And she has a vague idea that eggs have cholesterol and so they are bad, despite my trying to explain to her the difference between dietary and blood cholesterol. Although she continues to eat full-fat cheese, kefir and evaporated milk in her coffee, and 0% Greek yogurt, so that tells you something about her nutritional awareness. At 68 she still doesn't really understand nutritional labels. This summer we had a week-long fruitless argument about her eating canned chicken, which she regards as being safe because one serving has "10% the daily allowance of sodium", which is some rule she heard about somewhere for choosing low-sodium items. So the chicken is a "good choice", even though she always eats the entire can in one meal, which works out to 3 1/2 servings. She still insists that no matter how of it she much she eats it can't be over 10% of her daily sodium, because that's what the label says, and my mathematical explanations to the contrary are bogus, and her high blood pressure reading this morning is my fault for putting too much salt on the grilled vegetables yesterday. Sigh.
For me plums and peaches are still something special for the summer, and my American stepfather did not understand a few years ago when he bought plums at Sam's Club in February -- February!! They were from South America somewhere, rock hard, and tasted like a dishrag -- and neither my mother or I ate them. And at my American cousin's wedding they had a backyard reception with a roast pig, and all the old German ladies went to get a piece of the crispy fatty skin because what a treat! All the Americans were shocked -- so unhealthy! Yet they ate burgers and fries 2x a week at least, and package cookies every day, which the 80-year-old tantes never would think of. Still many differences between American and European food habits I think.
Nowadays I probably have about 10 eggs a week having moved to a lower carb diet over the last 10 years and especially since leaving full time employment and working for myself. I noticed a difference in afternoon energy levels despite being a serious athlete (2 hours a day).
I wrote an article about the health benefits of eggs some while back from my website. It is at: http://www.drdobbin.co.uk/eggs-and-health.
I probably eat the same amount of eggs now. I have nothing against eating more of them but I like to get the best quality eggs and those are rather expensive.
What's that as a P value?
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