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Comment by noir_lord | Hacker News Reader

What is an 'antinutrient'?.

Googling antinutrient with egg whites seems to bring up relatively few highly spurious 'paleo' type sites.

Raw eggs contain the anti-nutrient avidin, a protein that binds to biotin, making it unavailable as vitamin. If you eat large quantities of raw egg you could theoretically become biotin deficient. Cooking destroys the avidin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidin

Additionally, the protein in raw eggs is poorly absorbed, which could be because of other unidentified anti-nutrients. Again, cooking solves the problem:

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/128/10/1716.full

Good thing no one eats raw eggs then

Seriously! It's like someone complaining about hamburgers and then enumerating all of the problems with eating raw hamburger.

People certainly do eat raw eggs. In the UK, the vast majority of eggs are from vaccinated chickens ("Lion Mark") and are considered safe to eat raw. Raw egg yolks taste much better than cooked egg yolks IMO. And there is an old idea of eating raw eggs as a protein supplement for athletes, eg. Sylvester Stallone does it in Rocky. This is now discredited but eggs are cheap and easily available so people probably still do it.

They're hard to find because most grocery stores don't stock them, but you can actually buy pasteurized eggs at some places in the states too. They pasteurize by putting the eggs in hot water for a few minutes, so it's a simple process that you could actually do at home (but getting it right is tricky).

I have a prairie oyster for breakfast sometimes: one unbeaten raw egg, a few dashes of worcestershire sauce, a little Tabasco, salt and pepper, and then you kindof eat it like it's a raw oyster. It's an acquired taste.

In Western Canada, prairie oysters are cooked bull testicles, so another acquired taste (one I never acquired)

if you eat cake at my house you do, Royal Icing is made using raw egg white :)

That counts as eating raw eggs about as much as gelatin and pork rinds are protein supplements.

Of course they do. Eating raw eggs has been a fitness fad in the past. But besides things like chocolate mousse and whiskey sours, a lot of people eat their eggs only slightly warmed but not fully cooked.

We eat raw egg all the time in our house. Over rice with shoyu and its awesome.

I consider that to be at least partially cooked. Enough to destroy the anti-nutrients? I dunno.

If you've ever had proper mayonnaise, you've eaten raw egg.

Yes, because people eat raw egg whites all the time.

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It's big in Korea

Not sure why you were downvoted, by I re-upped what I could for adding information.

There are people who eat raw or undercooked eggs. Not just some fad diet either, in some countries it's mainstream. In Japan it's common to mix a raw egg into rice or soup... very tasty and their eggs have a deep rich color in their yolk too.

Anything that interferes with the absorption of nutrients. Most commonly they would be inhibitors of the catalysts that break down foods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinutrient

But yes, the paleo theories mostly focus on it having some kind of effect on your stomach lining. It's a bit speculative. It seems they all point to this discussion as the original source: http://thepaleodiet.blogspot.com/2010/01/paleo-diet-q-29-jan...

All those egg eating dinosaurs really had it coming didn't they?

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