For one study, researchers gave babies an egg to eat every day. The amazing effect: the children grew much taller.
What is this all about?
About an underestimated superfood: the egg! Lora Iannotti, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, wanted to find out if chicken eggs could improve the health of children in developing countries. Child underdevelopment is a major problem: Some 155 million children worldwide are underdeveloped - and poor nutrition is often to blame.
How did she test it?
Zanotti and her team prescribed special feeding plans to 160 babies between the ages of five and nine months. For this, they chose a rural region in Ecuador where many people live in poverty. Half of the babies were fed a chicken egg every day in addition to their normal diet. The other children only ate an egg now and then.
What did the eggs do to the babies?
They made them grow - significantly! Underdevelopment was almost 50 percent less in the egg-eaters than in the other children. Even the babies who were physically underdeveloped at the beginning of the study now grew significantly in length and weight. Height is an indication of whether the children are developing healthily.
What do the researchers have to say about the result?
"We were surprised at how big the effect of this intervention was," says Lora Iannotti. "Eggs contain a combination of many different nutrients, so that was crucial here." Eggs contain many different vitamins, iron, folic acid, calcium, magnesium, and fluorine, among others.