Some eggs are making me sick, and I figured out why!
This post may contain affiliate links and/or codes. You won't pay anything extra, but I might make a commission.
Do you feel sick after eating eggs, but not all eggs? I may have cracked the code on why some eggs leave me feeling nauseous and achy, while others leave me feeling fine.
Why do eggs make me sick?
I've been meaning to write about this for a long time. Someone other than me must be suffering from this and not know it. It took me months to figure out that eggs were making me sick to my stomach. Maybe I can help someone else figure it out quicker than I did.
About fifteen months ago, I started feeling sick to my stomach. Not always nauseous, more like how you feel when you know you're going to have diarrhea. And my back was killing me all the time. Sometimes I felt feverish. I felt like this all day, every day, for the summer of 2013. It really sucked. I slept a lot, and was in fog much of the time.
Ruling Out Wheat
My big fear, at first, was that I was having a problem with wheat. I live on bread and pasta. Take away my carbs and you might as well take away my soul as well. But I was feeling so terrible that I actually tried giving up wheat.
My plan was to do it for a week and see if things got better. But I quit after four days because there was no change. On the one hand I was glad - I could still eat bread! But on the other, I still had no clue what was going on.
Blood and stool tests
After about a month I really started to get worried. Did I have some kind of horrible intestinal disease? Were the amoebas that had hitch-hiked back home with me after a trip to South America in 1998 making a comeback tour? Did I have some kind of cancer?
I went to my doctor, who checked me out and ordered some blood tests and stool tests (man, was that an experience, let me tell you…on second thought, I'm not going to, because it was a really really really gross process). I was afraid of what the tests would find, but whatever it was would be better than not knowing and just feeling sick all the time.
The tests showed nothing.
Breakthrough
Then, after about three months of feeling like that (it was beginning to feel normal - I have no idea how I was functioning), I took the kids to my mom's house in Buffalo for a six-day visit.
One of the reasons I love visiting my mom is that my favorite fast food restaurant, Mighty Taco, is on her corner. Usually, when I'm staying with her I just wait to eat until Mighty Taco opens up at 10:30 and have a nice healthy breakfast of burritos and nachos.
Despite how I was feeling, I kept to my usual Might Taco breakfast schedule (I mean, it wasn't going to make my stomach worse). And by day three I realized that I was feeling better! Not just better, but good. By the time I left my mom's house to head back to Brooklyn, I felt totally normal.
And on the drive back it hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks falling on my head. I hadn't had a single egg in six days.
At home I start pretty much every single day off with an egg or two, scrambled or in an omelet. I've been doing this for decades. And now, suddenly, eggs appeared to be making me sick.
Was it an egg allergy?
I started reading everything I could about egg allergies, and at first it seemed like that was what I had. It was weird, though, to develop an egg allergy as an adult. Everything I read said that it was most common in kids, and that they usually outgrew it. Also, allergy symptoms usually happen immediately, not several hours later. And I didn't have any kind of respiratory or skin symptoms, which usually go with allergies.
Was it an egg intolerance?
Doing more reading, I discovered that there is such a thing as egg intolerance, which is different from an allergy. I seemed to match the most common symptoms perfectly:
- nausea
- diarrhea
- stomach cramps
- acid reflux
- achy feeling
- brain fog
- fatigue
- headaches
- joint pain
- feverish feeling
Experimenting
When I got home I started experimenting. First, I made some cookies using eggs as an ingredient, and ate a couple. I was fine. I could still eat baked goods! Yay!
Then I hard-boiled an egg and ate that. Again, no reaction. Eggs cooked very well seemed to be OK. Egg salad and deviled eggs were still a go!
Then, just to make sure, I scrambled an egg on my third morning back and ate it. And within three or four hours, that sick feeling came back. Bingo. It took almost two days until I felt OK again.
I was glad (dancing-in-the-streets thrilled, actually) that I'd found the culprit. I would miss eating scrambled eggs, but at least I knew what to avoid.
Fresh brown eggs didn't make me sick!
A couple of months later I was back at my doctor's office for something routine and I mentioned what I'd discovered. She suggested that I try a really fresh egg. Like, right out of the chicken fresh. Hmm.
I figured that Fresh Direct was my best shot. I bought the freshest, most expensive eggs they carried. And I ate one scrambled. And I was fine!!!
Then the next time I bought them, I felt sick again. What the heck was going on?
I kept experimenting with different brands, and found one that never makes me sick. They're expensive, brown eggs from pastured chickens. Maybe it's what the chickens are eating, or maybe this farm gets its eggs to the store quickly. I have no idea! All I know is that I can even eat runny eggs with this brand and I feel fine. (For people who have these brands in their stores, brown pastured eggs from Handsome Brook Farms and Vital Farms are both fine for me.)
Is it the egg whites?
A bunch of things that I read said that for most people with an egg sensitivity, it's usually the whites that are causing the problem. I don't think that's what happened with me. I can eat those liquid egg whites no problem.
I also have no problem with egg sandwiches from Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts, which both use a pasteurized liquid egg product, the kind you pour out of a carton.
I'm able to eat egg sandwiches from McDonald's with no problems as well, which initially confused me. I used to be a grill cook at McDonald's and had personally cracked thousands of white eggs on breakfast shifts. I assumed they still used fresh whole eggs, and had originally written here that perhaps McDonald's just went through so many eggs that they never got the chance to get old.
But a reader clued me in that McDonald's now also uses liquid packaged eggs! (I'm not sure why I didn't look this up myself while writing this post instead of just assuming that everything was still the same as when I worked there several decades ago. I guess I didn't want to admit that I'm that old!!)
Sure enough, McDonald's now uses liquid eggs in some of its breakfast menu items, but not all.
Basically, if you get an Egg McMuffin, that egg was a whole egg cracked onto the grill. If you get scrambled eggs, those are made from packaged liquid eggs, but are cooked right there on the grill.
The folded eggs that are used on biscuit sandwiches are also liquid eggs, but they were cooked off-site and frozen, and then heated up on the grill at McDonald's. And lastly, the eggs in their breakfast burritos are made from liquid eggs that are cooked off-site, and then microwaved at McDonald's.
So if you have issues with fresh eggs but not packaged liquid eggs, choose accordingly!
Old Eggs
As eggs age, they develop sulfur, and I'm guessing that that's the key here for me (and it's only a guess-I am very much not a doctor!). Really really old, rotten eggs smell overwhelmingly like sulfur, but it takes a long time for an egg to get to that point. There's an in-between point where they don't smell like sulfur yet, but they're no longer fresh.
You can get a clue as to how old an egg is based on whether it floats, stands, or sinks in water. As an egg ages, its protective membrane gets weaker, and air gets inside. A fresh egg will sink, an older egg will stand on end, and a really old egg will float (doesn't mean that that egg isn't safe, it's just old).
According to the USDA, which regulates eggs, the "use by" date can be as long as 45 days after the egg was packed (and they don't seem to define how long the egg can hang around the farm before being packed, either!):
Terminology such as "Use by", "Use before", "Best before" indicates a period that the eggs should be consumed before overall quality diminishes. Code dating using these terms may not exceed 45 days including the day the eggs were packed into the carton.
But here is a factory egg on the left and an expensive farm-fresh egg on the right. Both sank. So if age really is the culprit, we're talking about an amount of time that's a lot smaller than this test can determine.
If I had the patience, I would buy several dozen eggs with the same dates and eat one a day until I got sick, to determine how old an egg could be before it affected me. But I don't see myself doing that any time soon. I buy a dozen eggs from pastured hens each week, and I use the leftovers from the week before for hard-boiled eggs or baking.
Restaurants
I can no longer eat eggs at any old restaurant. Diner and coffee shop eggs have made me sick.
Sometimes if I'm at a really nice restaurant I'll grill my server on how fresh the eggs are (yes, I've had to become that person) and get some, but usually, I just skip them.
As I mentioned before, fast food egg sandwiches seem to agree with me just fine. I cannot, however, eat breakfast sandwiches from our local bagel place, which really bums me out, because we order from there almost every weekend. I tried it twice, and felt sick both times.
Why Write Now?
So why am I writing about this today of all days? Because I'm still getting tripped up by this and did it to myself again yesterday!
I made fresh pasta the way I always make fresh pasta: one egg per person. And since I was making a large amount of pasta and meatballs, I had to send my husband to the store for a couple cartons of eggs. Cheap, factory eggs, because that's what he buys. And since I wasn't cracking the eggs into a pan and eating them right away, it totally didn't occur to me that I needed to use the good eggs!!!
I had two big bowls of pasta last night and then went to bed. I woke up several times last night with reflux and I felt terrible. Feverish and crampy and nauseous.
I woke up this morning thinking it was just the red sauce, which always gives me trouble if I eat it too late. But as the day wore on I felt worse and worse. I asked my husband if he felt OK. I was scared to ask our dinner guests from the night before if they felt sick. Had I poisoned our friends somehow?
And then my back started to hurt and I realized what was going on. Crap.
The good news is (besides the fact that I didn't sicken my friends and family with a pasta dinner somehow), I know that I should feel fine by this time tomorrow.
So what can you do?
If you suspect that you have an intolerance to eggs, I suggest you do on purpose what I did accidentally: stop eating them and see how you feel.
If you feel better, try eating them very well cooked, like in baked goods and hard-boiled eggs. Try liquid eggs. Find really fresh eggs and see if those are OK. Try brown eggs. Try white eggs. Try eggs from pastured chickens that eat grubs all day. See what happens.
Just make sure you give it enough time between so that you know for sure what is affecting you. It takes me about two days to recover after eating eggs that don't agree with me, so if you're testing, you should probably give yourself three days to see if the symptoms go away.
Good luck!
WOW! I coud have written this myself! We had been buying local eggs from a feed store. I was eating them ALL the time. The do sit in the fridge there for a week at time. How fresh do they need to be? I realized my issue was eggs just a few weeks ago. We thought is was the local eggs we were buying. Unfortunately for me it is like roulette on whether I get sick or not. I know that a bad egg will float. Unfortunately, the eggs I had today were upright...but not floating. At the time I thought..hmmmm I wonder if that is air inside making it stand up? It HAS to be. It took and hour but I got seriously ill..and have hit the bathroom! Looks like I will be avoiding eggs again! I'm so sad!
For me I've found that around two weeks after the 3-digit date on the carton is about it. The carton I have in my fridge now says "308" (just look for a 3-digit number without any letters or anything else). That means November 3rd (the 308th day of the year). I honestly don't know if the number represents the day the eggs were laid or the day they were packaged up or what, but that's what I use as a reference. Once they're about two weeks old I feed them to my family or make them into hard-boiled eggs, which don't seem to bother me at all.
I have resolved to NOT eating eggs anymore ~ and I can occasionally eat an egg from a Amish farm nearby but I don't like not knowing if they are new or old enough to make me sick. That being said I also have issues with antibiotics that say "don't eat eggs" and now knee injections that say to not use if you have allergies to eggs. Well, it's not an allergy ~ I just get sick. I had injections yesterday and this morning a ~ well you know loose toileting ~ and am nauseous SERIOUSLY? can a shot in the knee produce that effect? I don't understand~ I did NOT eat it~ I am not terribly ill so will continue with the knee injections for 5 weeks but surprised none the less that a shot in the knee could make me ill
I've had a bizarre reaction to pretty much just overcooked eggs. Hard-boiled, fried and poached are fine...even scrambled soft when I make them myself are tasty and make me feel good. whenever I eat (what I consider) over-cooked eggs, and/or if they are beaten and cooked in such a way that the curd is really tiny I feel nauseated immediately and can't shake that queasiness for hours. What is with this? We don't use milk in them and seems to be worse if that's the case in a scramble, omelette or baked egg thing. Ugh barf.
Eww, that sounds awful.
This seems to be my issue as well! I can eat cake and cookies all day, but one scrambled, hard-boiled egg or omelette and about an hour later my digestive tract hates me. I messed up today because I had too much ice-cream that had egg listed as an ingredient.
I'm going to try super fresh eggs someday when I can afford to be sick as a dog that night just in case...
Thanks!
I can eat mayo, cookies, cakes, pastas, etc with no issues. If I have the tiniest amount of scrambled egg I get indigestion immediately, which then leads to cramping, vomiting, and other horrible stomach stuff.
We have chickens and ducks who should all start laying soon, hoping to try eating them with success! I've been told people with chicken egg allergies can often eat duck eggs with no issues. Have you ever had duck eggs?
Someone once told me it had something to do with proteins in either the yolk or whites, and how they break down while cooking. So cookies and the like break down further than a scrambled egg. But that doesn't fully make sense since I can eat mayo like a champ, and cookie dough has never made me sick (i don't do that often but sometimes it's hard to resist).
Thanks for this post, it's difficult to navigate what eggs and dishes I shouldn't eat. The sickness is so bad and gross I stay clear from any type of egg dish.
Also, I was allergy tested and tested no reaction to eggs! Was upset of all the allergies they said I do have when eggs was the reason I was there!
Oh man, sounds like you have it worse than I do - it never made me throw up!! I haven't tried duck eggs. But I hope they work for you!!
Glad to have found this! All of a sudden I can't eat scrambled eggs anymore. I get nauseated right away. I am going to try fresh eggs and see if it makes a difference!
Oh, I sincerely hope it works out well! Good luck!!
I just found this today. Thank you sooo much! I have the same issue and could never find someone to tell me if eggs actually had sulphur in them. I am allergic to sulphur and have wondered for years why scrambled eggs made me queasy. Now I have an answer.
It makes my day every time I help one more person figure this out. Thank you for letting me know!!
I know this is old, but I could have written this myself!! I've been suffering with this for months. Roughly 5!! Anyhow, we eaten farm fresh eggs for years. And this went away for about a month and today, had some eggs (as usual) and BAM....stomach pain again. I'm like you...it's takes a few days to get back to normal.
I've been wondering for 2 years if I'd ever eat an omelet again. It hadn't become a problem for me until about the 3rd trimester of my pregnancy. Every time I ate eggs I would vomit. I assumed the 'baby didn't like it' and waited for my pregnancy to end. First time I ate an omelet I was so sick and it appeared it hadn't gotten any better. I tried organic eggs, antibiotic, cage free eggs, and nothing seemed to work. Boiled eggs aren't a problem though...just scrambled eggs, omelets, etc. This is great insight! Thanks for sharing!
After all my online searches, typing "why store eggs make me sick" finally landed me on this blog post - and it confirms everything I thought it was. I have never had any food intolerances up until summer last year, when I seemed to be sick with many of the above symptoms almost daily. It was at this time I started to think it was food related and started slowly eliminating things from my diet.
I still had a hard time figuring it out - I had eggs almost everyday, but they were fully cooked and I'd never had problems with them before. So why now? I couldn't imagine that the eggs were the culprit because they never had been in the past. I slowly eliminated them altogether, and wasn't getting sick anymore. I honestly feared that it was the eggs...with the exception of baked goods where it's like one egg to 24 cookies. It wasn't until around October when I ate a basic piece of wheat toast with an egg over easy, that it finally clicked. Like all other times when I ate eggs, I was sick almost immediately upon finishing my food! I was so sick it was physically draining and I would just be tired for hours. I knew right then, it was the eggs (insert crying face emoji here).
So I limited to them in my diet, and was able to eat them if I took a special supplement beforehand. At least I could eat them if I had enough forethought to take it. But I was still bothered by the fact that at 31, my body decided it didn't like eggs anymore. And then Christmas morning came around...and I was daring enough to try some scrambled eggs with veggies, without the supplement, and I hoped like crazy I wouldn't be spending the remainder of the morning in the bathroom.
I.Was.Fine.
Not even the slightest upset to my digestive system in any way. But why?! How?! I started to think I knew what it was...but wanted to be sure it wasn't a fluke. Turns out, Christmas morning I had fresh eggs from a neighbor of the family. I wanted to further this theory...so a few days later I made a frittata with some of the eggs we took home at Christmas. I.Was.Fine. I made another frittata a week later, still fine. And today, the finality of my experiment, an egg that wasn't fully cooked... I made one of these fresh eggs over easy on an English muffin. I'm fine!
I really had confirmed that at least for me, I'm completely fine with fresh eggs straight from the chicken coop. Even still, I couldn't help but wonder why that is - or if other people had similar experiences to mine. Enter: your blog. I'm so glad you took the time to write about your experience. And although I still have questions as to the exact reason it is this way - I almost don't care! Because I can eat eggs without getting sick! Fresh eggs, that is!
Our stories are SO similar. I'm so glad you found my post!
So glad I found this. Same problem since my second child. A couple of weeks ago my mom invited me to have dinner with her. She was having bacon, eggs and pancakes. I told her I would have to pass on the eggs and she mentioned she had blue eggs! I thought it's a worth a try and I had been craving eggs for a while. So she fried me 2 and they were delicious..kept waiting for the horrible belly and back pain, but nothing happened....I was so relieved that I could have eggs again...yae!!!. Next I'm going to try fresh eggs. Thanks so much
I have this same problem and miss eggs tremendously what supplement helped you? I can’t wait to try fresh eggs and I hope I can tolerate them!
That person left her comment a few years ago, so I'm not sure she'll respond. I wish I knew!
I have a similar issue with eggs. I purchased a dozen Eggland 2 days ago, Exp Sept 26th. Yesterday I ate 2 and they tasted great, no sickness, this morning i ate 2 more from the same carton and I got sick so I'm not sure about the freshness thing. Any Ideas besides the possibility the eggs packaged are not from the same batch?
No clue, but I will say that the eggs I've been buying that are supposedly from pastured chickens always have an expiration date further out than that - usually about 45 days or more.
I have had the problem with eggs for many, many years. I have many environmental allergies so I just added it to my list of 'allergies' I used to love eggs and could not figure out why those baked, highly cooked foods didn't bother me. I love this article. Thank you.
I have long discovered I can eat the low cholesterol eggs in a carton. They are a great substitute when you are missing your scrambled egg and toast in the morning.
I have also found out that it may have something to do with sanitizing mass quantities of eggs from the packagers. Apparently they blast the eggs with high pressure cleaner that pulls off the outer most cover of the shell. This is believed to be why some of us get sick from eggs. It must be a very protective layer that is stripped away and those of us who are sensitive will feel the consequences. Wish I could find the article I had read and site the reference.
This may also be why many of us can easily eat very, very fresh farm eggs and not have a reaction.
Thought you may want to hear another possible theory.
I was just happy to find out it was not just me and I had not lost my mind.
I was so bad that I couldn't even walk into the kitchen if someone was cooking eggs.
Thanks for the insight.
You're so welcome!!
I've read the same thing about the washing of eggs. It's why people in other parts of the world can keep their eggs on the counter while we have to keep them in the fridge. I wouldn't be surprised if that process causes sulfur to develop faster too!
My 10 year old is dying in his bed right now and I know the last thing he ate was an over easy egg and toast at 2pm when we were about to leave for errands at 6 he started telling me he was so sick but he gives me the nauseous thing everyday in the car so I figured he was pre car sick since he knew we were leaving..but then we get to store 1 and he vomits...after opening car door once because he didn’t feel good while em toutethe second store he goes not once but twice to restroom to vomit and he’s vomited at least twice more since getting back home at 845...I thought maybe it was type of egg usually if I give him scrambled he’s fine..so we’re going to investigate this over a longer break from school. This article is amazing though thanks so much for sharing and sorry you had to go through so much painstaking research. Ps my mom always said she’s been egg intolerant I wonder if I can get her to experiment with this idea of fresh eggs.
Oh that's awful! I hope he gets better soon, and that you find some answers.
Hey Amy. Thank you so much for your comments. I suddenly could no longer eat eggs about 3 years ago after a 3-6 egg white a day life. It took me forever also to figure out it was eggs. I have the same symptoms you describe above. I'll try them again after a few months without (I've gone as long as 6 months without) and it depends, more often than not they will make me sick.
Your comments about sulfur is what got my attention, because I developed an allergy to sulfur about 3-5 years ago. I'm curious if this might be related. I intend to test it out this weekend with the freshest eggs I can find.
Wish me luck. I miss eggs!
Oh good luck! I hope this is it because at least you'd be able to work some eggs back in. I'm so glad I wrote this. We need to spread this info!!
I’m also curious about the sulfur aspect. Can you drink wine and feel okay? I get a raging headache every time I drink wine and have heard that that’s related to sulfur. Breakfast eggs have only started bothering me the last few years. Breads, cakes, potato salads haven’t had an effect.,
I wish I knew--I don't drink!!
Genius! I have been searching for years. I could eat eggs fine until I had my son. 7yrs ago. It's been like playing roulette sometimes they make me sick sometimes they don't. But fresh yard eggs from my neighbor never make me sick. It makes so much sense it's scary the thought never crossed my mind as to the age.of the eggs. It explains so much. Unfortunately I lost today and have to deal with being sick all day. Thank you
So glad you could figure it out! When I finally did it was like a giant light bulb going off over my head.
This describes exactly me, and it also started after I had my son!
This is me as well. After each kid I’ve lost something i can eat. Eggs and corn products. It’s rough.
Oh that sucks, corn syrup is in everything!! I'm so sorry.
Wow! I thought I was alone. I loved eggs growing up and ate them practically every single day. It wasn’t until I reached my 20s that I realized eggs made me nauseous after just a couple of bites. Now this doesn’t always happen as sometimes I can eat a poached egg with hollandaise sauce or egg salad sandwich and not get sick but the majority of the time after taking a couple of bites I fight the urge to vomit. I cannot eat breakfast sandwiches from Burger King or McDonald’s or anywhere else for that matter. The weird thing is when I am able to eat an egg without getting sick it is random but I rejoice. Breakfast is just not the same without eggs and neither is a high protein diet. I wish I knew what it was that made me sick but reading through some of the information here make me want to experiment. Funny thing is I’ve visited in Europe, London and Ireland specifically, and had a breakfast with eggs included and did not get sick at all! How weird is that? When I returned home to the US, I still got sick after eating eggs! I’ve tried farm fresh eggs and the first time didn’t get sick but did the second time..It is so sad because I absolutely love eggs and I will keep trying every Time to eat them. I want to know why I did not get sick eating eggs in another country? Do they handle their eggs and chickens differently? I think it has to do with what the chickens are fed.
I'm 21 and I have the exact same issue! Sometimes I'm fine, but sometimes after a few bites I have to focus on keeping it down. I didn't realize that the way it's cooked might matter until recently when my mom pointed out that I'm good with her "Dutch Baby" pancakes (thin, fried) and fried eggs, but scrambled or poached can be a problem. I also found the same thing with European eggs - I was eating soft boiled eggs in Denmark completely fine. According to google, European eggs aren't washed the same way as American ones so maybe it has to do with the "bloom" that someone else mentioned. Anyway I'm curious if you have found any solution and I'm going to start experimenting too!
I have the exact same thing! I used to live in the Netherlands I never got sick from eggs. I'm now in the US and get sick from eggs. Not every egg tho which is weird! It's like Russian roulette. I'm going to try fresh eggs from a friend. In the Netherlands we don't wash them so I asked him not to wash them, maybe that's it. And almost all eggs are free ranged and not refrigerated in the Netherlands. Could be what they feed the chickens too. I know what we feed them in the Netherlands so when I get sick from these too I'll ask him what he feeds them. I do have the exact symptoms like everyone else here. Back pain, nausea, heavy stomach pain.. Really weird.
Demei,
Just a thought... Many of the toxic chemicals and pesticides that are used in the US on crops, eaten by chickens, cattle, hogs etc. are banned in Europe and other countries. The weed killer, Round Up, for example, is banned in other countries.
See, what *I* took away from all of that was that clearly the answer is that you need to subsist on a diet of Mighty Taco.
@Toni: IF ONLY!!!
I learned a while back I can't eat eggs anymore either. I'm willing to try farm fresh eggs, and luckily there is a farmer's market on the same street where I work.
Now, you do know you're going to have to share that pasta recipe with us, right?
@Rita: You should totally try it, good luck!
The egg pasta recipe I use it totally easy: 4 eggs and 470g of all-purpose flour for four servings. Mix together and knead by hand or stand mixer until smooth and shiny (it's really hard to knead so I wouldn't advise doing it by hand, but people do!). Wrap in plastic wrap and let sit out for between 30 minutes and 3 hours. Roll out, cut, and cook! I have an Atlas pasta maker that I've had for more than 20 years that works great. http://slf.sh/1vGGUiS (affiliate link)
I swear what you experienced is exactly what's happening to me right now..back pain and all!
I've eaten eggs all my life (I'm 71) and have never had this problem before. Beings I'm not a youngster anymore I thought I'd pay the extra and try some cage-free eggs. That was about 2 weeks ago and I've been sick almost every day since then. And yes, egg or eggs for breakfast, usually poached. I'm throwing the remainder away! I'm so glad I read your post....now maybe I can start feeling human again!!
Ugh, I'm so sorry, it's such a terrible feeling!
My son and I had farm fresh eggs this morning and we are both very gassy and have stomachache. I have back pain as well. The eggs were fresh. I always test them in water to make sure they don't float. We usually get our eggs from another farm and those do not bother us at all. They don't have a sulphur smell when cooking like the ones this morning. I am beginning to think the problem lies with what the chickens are fed and the water. The ones that have sulphur smell drink water that is high in iron. It isn't an additive it is the water in that area. So what do you think? I will have to try and find out what each farm feeds the chickens. Thanks for posting your article.
Oh wow, I never even thought about the chickens' diets. That's an interesting theory!
Amy - i am having trouble with eggland's best vegetarian eggs and believe it is the hens diet.
I’m also having trouble with England’s Best eggs. It must be the chicken’s diet. I never 5hlught about trying any other eggs but now I will do some experiments.
This is the same issue I was having. As a child I never had problems with eggs. I started getting the the same symptoms as people who are lactose intolerant about 3 or 4 years ago when I would eat eggs by themselves. Never cooked in things (like cake/cookies). I discovered it's mainly white eggs that affect me like that. The free range ones don't. But sometimes they did...lol. it's been years I've tried to figure out why. I think it totally is the diet. The cleaner the eat the less they seem to bother me. I'm getting eggs straight from the farm this weekend that are on pasture all their lives and are only fed organic grains, no hormones or other drugs are ever used. Hopefully they will not affect me.
i have had the same problem recently -- after eating eggs all my life without a problem
interesting thoughts .
I am inclined to agree with you that it's something to do with what the chickens are fed. This needs scientific investigation. I also have problems now with mushrooms - and I think it is the same problem....And what about the poor chickens ???
I know I'm late to the party with this chat, but... I've finally figured out what triggers my sore tummy with eggs. I'm absolutely fine if I eat them hard boiled, poached etc. but as soon as they're mixed with dairy (scrambled or in an omelet) I get the worst pain in my tummy all day and sometimes more. Aparently it's something to do with dairy and eggs mixed together and some people can't digest it correctly. Thought this might help
Ooh, that's a very interesting piece of the puzzle, thank you!
I've been suffering with this and it totally makes sense, since I'm slightly lactose. I can have ice cream and Mily or dairy items, but I have to watch my serving size. I wonder if the McDonald's sausage egg and cheese McMuffin I ate this morning and flushed down the toilet by noon is made with eggs and milk
I can drink milk, eat cheese, etc., but oddly enough, I can’t eat the FROZEN dairy, like ice cream and milkshakes. Could it be something that is used to thicken the dairy that gives me gastric distress?
Oh that's so interesting! Have you tried making ice cream yourself just as a control? If you're OK with your own homemade frozen foods then you could explore frozen dairy with different ingredients.
I have this problem with ice cream. I think it is the additives. Especially carageenan ( which has the possibility of being a form of MSG).
Interestingly, ice cream in the US is not classified as a food so all ingredients are not declared. Formaldehyde is the biggest reason not to eat it.
Dixie I get sick if I eat frozen dairy or drink dairy milk. I can do small portions of cheese, butter and yogurt and am ok. I think it’s the bacteria in the cheese and yogurt that helps. On the butter I believe the very small amount of milk solids is why I’m usually ok with butter, although ghee never presents a problem. My sensitivity started when I developed ovarian cancer. Thought maybe this could be of use.
That's funny because I can eat eggs any way but hard boiled... if I eat them hard boiled I'm thrown into weeks if IBS hell.
I've been finding that I get really sick (bloating, nausea, back pain) if I have hard boiled eggs but I'm fine if I have scrambled or over medium.
Oh that's so weird, exact opposite of me!
I have the same exact problem. I lived on eggs growing up but until now I have a 50% chance I will get sick within 4 hours. I would run to the bathroom and stunk real bad of sulfur/vinegar. Very similar to patient's who get the overgrowth stomach bacteria from taking too many antibiotics. The egg Mcmuffins are the only sandwiches I will never get sick I thought it was very weird indeed. I feel its a combo of age and chicken diet. I avoid eggs as much as I can now.
I am late to this also. But my problem is with Liquid Eggs. If they are not thoroughly cooked (no creamy taste) I am fine. However, I had some scrambled eggs from IHop and I have been sick since. Nausea, headache, hot flashes (but no temperature). Sometimes during the day it goes away, then bam hits me hard. I learned that this is the problem, but I don't think about it when ordering out until it is too late. If I cook my own cracked eggs or order scrambled cracked eggs at a restaurant, I have no problem. But if I do not tell them, I get sick.
The question I have - how do you make it stop. I have not ate an egg for the last 5 days and the sick feeling is going strong. Any Ideas? HELP.
That sounds so awful, I wish I had an answer for you! Mine always went away after a day or two.
non grain fed pasture raised is the key. Chickens in their natural habitat eat insects, bugs, seeds, small stones, etc. from the ground. They should not be eating grains and corn in closed in factory farmed facilities as majority sadly are in USA.
A naturally healthy raised chicken produces a raised orange yolk when you crack it open.
So, judging an egg by its yolk color is not really an accurate way to assess the egg. Many factory farms have figured out that adding marigolds to chicken feed gives their eggs a nice orange yolk. OTOH, these yolks are typical of the eggs I've been eating all week, from an upstate farm with pastured chickens, purchased through a local CSA that only works with reputable farms. https://amyeverafter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200727_082325-scaled.jpg So while I totally agree that eggs from factory farms are not as good quality as eggs from pastured chickens, I wouldn't want people to think that they can judge the quality just by the yolk color.
Thank,you so much for this post! My daughter recently started complaining of eggs (omelet or scrambled) making her feel sick. She is a competitive gymnast so this was an easy way to get protein in her before practice. I have found eggs in anything doesnt bother her but straight eggs do.
I came across your article here just now looking for reasons to my feeling i'll. In all honesty I'm glad I did because I never even thought to question my eating eggs. I love eggs especially hard boiled so it's upsetting to think it could be what's bothering me. Twice now within I'd say about 3 days I've been very ugh.. My stomach is sour, leaving me nauseous, the gross bathroom business, feeling really horrible. The other day when it happened I didn't know why I was sick but between vomiting and diarrhea the bathroom was my friend for at least 2 days. Yesterday I was fine so I thought maybe i just had a bug but I ate half an egg this morning and i'm back in my nightmare again♀️ Going to call my GP for testing to confirm. Thankyou for writing this.
That really sucks but at least it's better than not knowing. :-(
I too am so thankful I came across this article. I thought I was losing my mind, because it's not all eggs all the time. also the symptoms are so weird ,cramping ,back pain nausea I knew it was eggs but my family thinks I'm crazy. I'm 52 and this just started about a year ago. In fact this morning I had eggs for breakfast and I feel perfectly fine. I'm going to continue to experiment with eggs and hopefully come up with my solution.
I live in Australia and have this problem - almost all eggs make me sick unless they're baked in a cake (yet not not in a quiche). Perhaps the sugar and high temperature changes the proteins somehow? However, whenever I visit Japan to see family, I can eat any eggs, cooked or raw, happily. I understand Japanese eggs are treated somehow to remove bacteria as they are often served raw.
The other possiblity is the food that chickens are fed. I have hayfever and oral allergy syndrome (a cross reactivity to pollen) which means I'm sensitive to some foods at some times (depending on what pollen is flowering at the time). This may be a clue for the egg problem.
I was researching poached eggs when I ran across this article. It seems that every time I hav e a poached egg, i get all the above symptoms. But, scrambled are fine. I get fresh eggs from my neighbor and they affect me the same as eggs I used to buy at the store.
when I stumbled upon this article today I was actually looking for an article I had read a year or so ago that explained it a little differently than it's explained here but the concept is the same, we raise our own chickens and even despite that if I were to cook them on the stove and eat them over easy or scrambled I would likely still have a problem and experience these exact same symptoms. However, when I make a quiche I experience no problems at all. The previous article I had stumbled upon which I can't find again, had explained that there is an enzyme in eggs which if not cooked to a high temperature will cause the stomach upset however if it is cooked at a high temperature, like in cookies or quiche or egg bakes etc, it kills that enzyme in the egg therefore not causing that horrible crampy stomach upset we've all come to know and hate from our eggs. Hope that helps.
Oh that is helpful, thank you! Gives me another avenue to research!
Hi Amy, I too, think I've become sensitive to eggs. I have a ranch, horses and chickens, our chickens are fed high quality scratch and corn and we cook them rice sometimes with corn mixed in, they love that. I have 2 acres, they free range. I had, what I believe was Covid last December, before it was all over the news. I couldn't breathe, felt like I was drowning and had to take 9 days off. Since then, my seasonal allergies are 100 times worse, constant runny nose, itchy eyes, sneezing. Every time I eat eggs and these eggs are literally laid yesterday, so fresh, I get so sick, back pain, nausea, headache, I have to go lay down, it's usually about 5 hours afterward. I made quiches for Christmas morning yesterday, big mistake. Wasn't able to eat another bite of food all night, my T-Bone steak is in the fridge this morning. I'm going to have to cut out eggs all together and see what happens. I'm 57 years old, I love eggs, always have. This totally sucks.
I'm so sorry. I'm wondering if packaged eggs would work for you? In my local stores I can only find packaged egg whites, but I know that packaged whole eggs exist because some restaurants use them. But I don't know if they're available for consumers. They never bother me, even in a soft scramble.
(The packaged whites never bother me, I mean. I haven't found the full eggs yet.)
Amy, I have a hunch that older people developed this egg intolerance about 5 years after having the flue vaccine each year. I think some eggs have a protein or more quantity of it, that flue antibodies respond to. That's why you can eat some eggs ok. and others not ok. Something for researchers to ponder.
I suppose anything is possible, but without some kind of statistics controlling for people who don't get flu vaccines, etc., I would have no reason to suspect this. Do you have any stats or a study to point to?
In the spring 2019 I had an allergy test that revealed I was intolerant to egg yolks and told to avoid them. I did and felt much better. I continued to eat egg whites without any issues. All was fine until the fall of 2019. I started getting lightheaded after eating my usual breakfast of three egg whites and my symptoms progressively became worse. I had brain fog and could barely function. Doing an elimination diet I finally realized it was egg whites that were causing my symptoms. I stopped the eggs and my symptoms disappeared.
I had no idea why I could eat egg whites without issue for a long period and then develop symptoms until I read this article. I now realize that my symptoms appeared about the time I had this year's flu shot. Today I tried another brand of eggs, free range/organic, and the brain fog and fatigue soon followed. I now believe that the connection between the current flu vaccines and egg intolerance are factual.
What an insane conclusion. There is nothing factual about some amateur not getting a flu shot and not having symptoms with eggs anymore now being able to blame it on the flu shot missing. Please try actual science - especially when you can't explain why plenty of people don't have problems with eggs after getting the flu shot. Funny how you don't blame the seasons even though flu shots are generally given over winter! I hope you don't have children.
Sue, You were unreasonably rude to Luke. Good grief, you sound hateful to someone you probably don't even know. In there is way too much hate. Calm down. People are entitled to their own thoughts and to sharing those thoughts.
So I’ve never, in recent years, have had a flu shot, but I have noticed in the last couple of years that I can’t stomach hard boiled eggs (soft or hard — nausea and a run to the bathroom which then goes away after), I have no idea why... I don’t understand the science of being able to tolerate fried eggs or scrambled (but not perfectly) since it’s still in egg. Anyway, my thoughts on Luke’s reply would be that I wonder if because he was allergic to egg yolks then it would only make sense you would eventually create an allergy to the egg white. It’s not like they’re made up of completely different proteins and minerals. Just a thought.
I have an egg allergy, which has been confirmed by allergy testing. The allergy is to the proteins in the egg. I have never had a flu shot. when cooked at high temperatures for longer periods in time, the protein in the egg gets brocken down, therefore likely will not cause a reaction. Nuts, on the other hand, the proteins do NOT get broken down when cooked. A person with a nut allergy will react.
Great article. And you are definatley onto something! But i think i got the egg mystery figured out.
I raise chickens for eggs only, I ran out of eggsyesterday so I bought some nice brown eggsfrom the grocery store. I ate 2 scrambled egg sandwiches in the afternoon. Today I'm sick....Ughhh. Everything you described to a T.
Ok, I do not refrigerate my eggs at all, except store eggs. Once they're refrigerated, they have to be kept cold. Straight from the hens, they can be kept on the counter and They're fine.
Eggs That are washed remove the natural bloom from the chicken, its a coating to protect the egg inside the shell. If the egg is cleaned too well, its going to be bad. These eggs will not float either. Once the bloom is removed, anythinh those eggs are exposed to are going to draw it in through the pores ofvthe shell. That causes a bacteria, sometimes you'll smell sulfur, sometimes not. But only after its cooked will it smell, if at all. Whats making You sick, is the bacteria being pulled in if its too well cleaned.
When I first started raising chickens, I scrubbed my eggs really well, I was sick after eating them. I was eating bacteria filled eggs. Not good. When I wiped them off with a dry rag just before cooking them, i was fine. You can also run them under running water, just dont wipe them. That bloom is thin, and you'll remove it.
So a semi dirty egg is the best. Lol.
Store bought eggs sometimes sit for months before you even get them from the store. I will not be buying store eggs again.
Try finding a hobby farm or farmers market to buy your eggs and I'm pretty sure you'll be fine with every egg you eat.
So true! Store bought eggs have no bloom which is the protectant. We raised chickens and those were the best eggs! When I gave them to people I explained this. I also think what chickens eat makes a difference.
Jody, I agree that what chickens eat makes a difference! If they are fed grain, corn for example, then whatever pesticides were sprayed on the corn during its growth can still be present when the chickens are consuming the corn. Traces of pesticides or other chemicals can be in the eggs. Some people do not tolerate those toxins.
farm fresh eggs seem to be worse for me.
Oh, that's so weird!! What about packaged eggs, like they use at some fast food places?
Hi Amy,
Thank you so much for your post, very interesting reading, Iam finding that the older I get the more allergic I become, it wasn’t until I put 2+2 together that I realised that for the last few months I have been suffering from feeling nauseous and gassy, bloated and achy that I have worked it out that it is eggs, I had a dippy egg this morning feeling pretty bad all day. Scotch eggs are fine as is pasta and meringue, So am hoping that with your advice I can conquer it.
Thank you again
Maria
I just have to say, I have never met anyone else who calls them Dippy Eggs except for our family! What a coincidence!!
Thanks for sharing this, I thought I was the only one. Eggs affect me in the same way it's mentioned here. I thought I was going crazy. Sometimes I eat them I'm fine and others I'm not. I've noticed it especially with scrambled eggs.
I ate egg salad today. I just thought because they were hard boiled.. That i wouldn't get sick. OMG i am so sick.. I never want to ever eat a nother egg..
Thank you!! I have been having issues for about 2 years now and have never put together what was going on..... until I stopped eating breakfast, the went on vacation and wasn’t eating eggs. Today for the first time in month I ate my daughters left over runny eggs and poof! Yuck I had no idea you could develop an egg intolerance at 42
same age here, same experience