The health benefits of eggs cannot be overemphasized as it has nutritional components that are helpful to the human body. In this article, we would be talking about the benefits of eggs, their origin, their components, and how it is a necessary item for healthy living.
Origin of Egg
History has it that humans have been eating eggs for about 6 million years. Eggs were originally eaten raw from the nests of wild birds.
It is said that jungle birds were tamed for egg production in India in the year 3200 BC.
It is also thought that Ancient Egypt and China were the first areas to domesticated hens.
People in South Asia in 1500 BC had already started the domestication of chickens and harvesting their eggs for food.
The most widely eaten variation of eggs is those of the fowl, especially chickens. Ostrich eggs were also eaten as well but not as commonly as Chicken eggs.
People also explored eating eggs from reptiles, amphibians as well as fish.
Fish egg eaten as food is popularly known as roe or caviar.
The bird and reptile eggs have a productive eggshell, albumen (egg white), and vitellus (egg yolk) contained within various thin membranes.
Due to their protein content, the United States Department of Agriculture formerly categorized eggs as meats within the Food Guide Pyramid.
Regardless of the nutritional value of eggs, there are some potential health issues arising from cholesterol content, salmonella contamination, and allergy to egg proteins.
Eggs have always been a valuable foodstuff since prehistory in both hunting societies and other cultures where chickens had been domesticated.
In Thebes Egypt, the tomb of Haremhab, dating to approximately 1420 BCE, shows a depiction of a man carrying a bowl of ostrich eggs as well as other large eggs which were thought to be those of the pelican as offerings. In ancient Rome, egg shells were crushed and used to wade off evil spirits.
In the Middle Ages, eggs were forbidden during Lent because of their richness in components. An annual pause in egg consumption to allow farmers to rest their flock and to also limit the hen's consumption of feed during the times of the year when food stocks are usually scarce.
Eggs were also scrambled with acidic fruit juices in France in the seventeenth century, this may have been the origin of lemon curd.
The dried egg industry originated sometime in the nineteenth century way before the rise of the frozen egg industry. In 1878 a company in St. Louis Missouri started to transform egg yolk and egg white into a light brown meal-like substance by using a drying process. The production of dried eggs significantly expanded during World War II for use by the United States Armed Forces and its allies.
