By Martha Serrie Benedict

According to one of my old acupuncture teachers, Dr. Se Han Kim, many years ago there was a clinical study on a large number of cardiac patients who were high risk due to excess build-up of plaque and cholesterol on arterial walls. These patients were given no treatment, but told to add the following food recipe to their diet:

1 egg yolk (range free chicken)
1 spoon RAW honey
1 spoon toasted sesame oil (e.g., Westbrae organic brand)

Eighteen months later tests were run a second time on this group of people and test scores had normalized in almost all of the patients! (Why isn't this information well-known in American medical literature? or by the American public?)

How can the much maligned egg yolk be pivotal in normalizing a severe cardiovascular picture threatening the lives and well-being of a vast number of Americans?

Oriental medicine has always been concerned with observation and relationships rather than the active ingredients taken out of their whole package. So their explanation of the effectiveness of this formula might be that egg yolk tonifies and moistens the aging drying heat in the body. The honey moistens and cools the rising liver/stomach fire which fans the flames of the heart making it rage out of control. The oil is specific nourishment necessary to well lubricated functioning of all internal organs, especially the heart, kidney, and liver, as well as calming the nervous system and brain, and moistening the skin.

The Western understanding of egg yolk would center on the importance of L-cysteine in the production of glutathione, an important amino acid in the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Glutathione is important in assisting the body in dealing with viruses. It increases sperm motility thereby supporting certain kinds of male infertility.

Egg yolks contain lecithin--three times more lecithin than cholesterol--as well as choline which helps lower blood cholesterol, supports the integrity of cell membranes, and is important in memory.

Egg yolks are a great source of the sulfur-containing amino acid, L-methionine. This is an important nutrient in working with chronic fatigue, macular degeneration of the eyes, Parkinson's disease, osteoarthritis, water retention, and tissue swelling.

The words are different east and west. but the observations seem congruous. Why would there be such a seeming difference in advice then? The literature offers no comment on this question. If you think about it however, it boils down to how the egg is cooked. In order to contain all the above-listed ingredients, the egg yolk must be uncooked! (Or cooked 6 hours in black tea.) Lecithin is destroyed by low cooking temperatures while cholesterol is heat stable to very high temperatures. Therefore raw egg yolks (ouch! another cultural problem) work. What about salmonella? Range chickens and range eggs are different than agribusiness egg production eggs. Chickens allowed to scratch on the ground for bugs, take bird baths, and move about are in general better off than agribusiness chickens kept in crowded cages where antibiotics and hormones keep disease at a minimum and egg production at a forced high level.

How can I eat RAW egg yolks? Plain as in the recipe above, eggnog, Caesar salad dressing, soft boiled, or carefully soft poached are acceptable. Even "fried" at low temperature in olive oil (not at restaurant grill temperature) is acceptable if the entire yolk is soft. What doesn't work is baked, hard boiled, scrambled, hot fried, omelets, crepes--i.e., any time the yolk goes from dark yellow to light yellow in the cooking process. It is an indictment of the American school of cooking eggs, not eggs per Se.