Some eggs are making me sick, and I figured out why!
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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!
I have been having the same issue since I had my last child in april of 2020. Ive been an egg eater my whole life, and enjoyed them in every possible way and form! Then all the sudden it felt like I was coming down with the flu and was nauseous, achy and my back hurt. I've had to cancel company and almost lost my cookies dropping off my daughter to school. ITS AWFUL, then it hit me... every time I eat eggs I get sick. I always know when I have completed my digestion of the eggs, bc I get the chills for 10 minutes and my body all the sudden seems to be clear of whatever it just went through. SO ODD! I have cut out eggs in my diet, but not in baked goods since that doesn't seem to affect me.. And sometimes i just bite the bulliet and say F it I want eggs for breakfast. and I have no symptoms. But today was different, i ate the cheap white eggs..... and now i am paying the price.... thank you for writing this article. I always feel like im crazy about eating eggs and the affect it has on me. Like you said everything you look up says its mostly in children blah blah blah...... Glad I am not the only one!
Glad I found your post- I’ve been trying to work out what’s going on with me- I thought it might be eggs but then it didn’t happen every time.... I’d been wondering about the age of the eggs ..... funny too I have no problem with McDonald’s eggs!
I've noticed as well only certain eggs make me sick. I usually get them from a certain place after I found that I feel fine after but i was at Walmart and didn't want to stop anywhere else. Welp, I should of known better, those always give me stomach pains and running for the bathroom and about an hour later, here came those pains. Thanks for your story. Feels nice to know I'm not crazy and im not alone with this egg mystery lol
I own ducks and eat atleast 3 eggs a week, suddenly it’s started to affect me too. My eggs are really stinking fresh though but one of our ducks is broody and laying on them, So maybe that could be. I’m also allergic to corn and there is corn in the feed. It wasn’t bothering me before but maybe because I eat so many eggs it might be building up in my system. I’m going to try a corn/soy free feed and see what happens.
Same. Walmart eggs made me ill. Back to organic, free range.
@Jlg, I miss eggs. McDonalds is hit and miss. Seems I can get one egg muffin but 2 or 3 is risky. Farm fresh brown blue white boiled fried it don't matter. Only egg noodles now. I really miss dipping my toast into fried eggs.
One day somebody mentioned that many vaccines for humans over the years were created using chicken or egg embryos. If there are any people in this thread who are unvaccinated with the same symptoms please speak up so I can debunk this theory, otherwise it is something to consider. Be open minded to possible causes to peanut and egg allergies.
I also have an egg intolerance within half an hour I’m physically sick or have to run to the bathroom.
I had a general anaesthetic and found out after I’d had surgery I was really sick and the anaesthetic is egg based the two nurses with me in recovery both said oh my!! You are allergic to eggs!!
I’m having my gallbladder removed next month
Really not looking forward to that general anaesthetic.
Don’t worry the egg component (egg phosohate) of the anaesthetic is not a trigger even for egg allergic rather than intolerant patients. We used to worry about using protocol in egg allergic patients but it is no longer thought to be an issue. Let your anaesthetist know you were sick after a previous anaesthetic and they can adapt the aaaesthetic for you.
Good luck with your surgery!
This has started to happen to me since last fall when I started a low-carb diet. Not sure the correlation, but your experiences almost mirror my own. I'm glad to see others have similar issues and it helps to understand what potential causes may be. Thank you for sharing!
Wow....so glad that you wrote this. I'm in my 50's. I ate eggs all the time, especially in the 90's when. I was doing low carb. Now, for the past 4 years I can't eat eggs that I make at home. I can eat eggs out at restaurants with no problem. I have tried organic and brown but I still have the same problem. I always run to the bathroom 4 hrs after consumption. I am trying to eat healthy and eggs are my go to. Hopefully, someone will figure this out.
Oh my goodness. I am so thankful you made this article. For the longest time, I would wonder why it would be when I made eggs at home, I would get nauseous. Its gotten to the point where I don't even cook eggs at home really. What is so strange is that I can eat deviled eggs that I make, but its something about scrambled eggs that doesn't sit well with my stomach. I can eat eggs at different resturaunts, but its something about making them at home, scrambled... I even tried looking up where to buy powdered eggs.
I too am so glad for Amy's article - I have been wondering why factory eggs give me IBS type symptoms but free-range are usually OK. It's been very difficult to find out why, and isn't easy to understand, but Amy bears out what I have also found. Such a relief to know I'm on the right track as the symptoms after eating factory eggs are dreadful. I guess it must be something they are fed with as all hens in the UK are vaccinated against salmonella so I'm sure it's not that. THANK YOU AMY!!
@Felicia Johnson, I too found farm fresh eggs are my friend however, what are you cooking your eggs in. Butter? Oil? I had to give up vegetable oil because of the soy. Some people are sensitive to corn and some to dairy. It's might be worth looking into. Good luck!
I may have developed a problem with eggs, but I think in order to do a test you can have smth with eggs maybe once a week and see how it goes. If you have a strong reaction, maybe even less frequently. If you eat one day smth with eggs & feel good, second day smth else & good, & third day again smth else & bad, it doesn’t mean that the third thing was bad - maybe you had just too many eggs in a row. I had egg allergy as a kid, never had problems as an adult, but now I had eggs every day in Hawaii and after that it got very very bad. Now not sure if I can eat any. It seems that the author was eating eggs every day, too. In my case, “the overdose” caused very bad acid reflux, which lasted many days. My body still remembers, so tries to avoid eggs at any cost. I think it’s a natural body’s reaction in attempt to protect itself. So I don’t think that the type of egg is the only thing that matters. For me, it was always ok to eat any type of egg before & never had any issues.
Thank you so much for posting this.
This morning I woke up feeling feverish, achey and backache and my stomach in knots. I did a pcr test which was negative, went to work, didn't feel right all day.
Last night I made an omelette with old eggs the due date was today. And it makes sense now. I have taken some omaprezole just now to ease the symptoms.
Clearly I need to use fresh eggs from now on and I may give scrambled eggs and omlettes a miss for a while because omg I don't want to go through that again as I am already allergic to foods like soya and mustard seed and peanut oil and it takes 3 hours or so to show.
I will see if I feel better the next day or so. Let's hope!
I hope you get some answers! I remember when I first felt sick, I assumed I'd caught a bug or something. It's tough when so many different things that could be wrong have similar symptoms!
Very interesting, Thanks. When trying duck eggs, I ended up poisoning myself, because I did not consider them going bad, before chicken eggs. First few were ok and the older they got, the more sick they made me. I did not put it together, until the last violent sick episode. Since then, even chicken eggs upset my stomach and I have never had a problem with them. Not wanting to give eggs up, I keep trying, hoping to convince my body to take them back. It does seem to be working. My stomach is not as sick as it was in the beginning stages of reintroducing eggs. Sometimes I am still surprised by an upset stomach and not feeling great. Like you, I am able to eat McD's egg sandwiches. This gives me hope that I can eat more eggs. if I get them fresher. Thanks, again.
I'm so glad you seem to be finding a solution! And I didn't know that about duck eggs either (I've never had one).
I love eggs and eat them all the time. Since 2015 I've had an abdominal distress problem that couldn't be diagnosed. Exactly the same symptoms you describe. I just recently narrowed it down to definitely being eggs. No eggs it goes away, eggs and several hours later abdominal distress, etc, which can last for several days and sometimes longer. When I Googled it I found this page. Interestingly enough, I've found a remedy, which is an herbal antibiotic concoction of Lomatium root extract and Usnea mixed together. That brings almost immediate relief, within an hour or so. I believe there must be some type of pathogen being passed to us in the eggs but have no idea what it might be. Thanks for sharing your experience - at least I now know others have the same problem. .
Great article! I’ve done so much trial and error to find out what if any eggs won’t make me ill. I just decided to stop eating them unless cooked very thoroughly. Tonight I started researching into pasteurized eggs and seeing if that’ll make a difference.
Thank you! And please let us know if pasteurized eggs make a difference - I keep meaning to try them!
I suspect I have an egg intolerance, but, it seems, only to eggs I make at home. I can eat eggs at any restaurant (so far). I can’t seem to find out the reason. If I make eggs at home, either boiled, scrambled, fried, you name it, I’ll get cramps and diarrhea. But I can go to any old greasy spoon and eat eggs without a problem, and any fast foot place. What’s different?
My experience is similar, and my best guess is turnover. Eggs don't hang around long at a diner, or a McDonald's. Plus, some fast food places use processed eggs in a carton or eggs that have already been cooked and frozen, which also don't bother my stomach.
I'm so glad you wrote this article! I found out my eggs were getting me sick a while ago and I suspected I let the eggs be in there too long. Generally if I eat them right away from the store, I'm okay, but not always. I used to get Meijer eggs and milk only since I'm allergic to the antibiotics that are generally in trace amounts in them (the women in my family all had this issue and just didn't drink milk or eat eggs cuz they would get allergy symptoms) had them all switch, they were fine too! But I recently moved to a place that doesn't have a Meijer.. only a Walmart and Costco all with brands that may contain antibiotics and if they claim not too they add iodine, which I get anaphylaxis from. Can't win sometimes.
After finding this I'm glad I'm not alone and it may also be old eggs ♀️
Was just about to fry some eggs for breakfast but since I get stomach issues after about 1 hour after eating eggs thought I would google egg consumption causing these issues and found this perfect explanation. Fits my symptoms like a glove. Didnt know about the fresh egg test either. This will change my life LOL.
Thanks for the information!!
Wow! Thank you so much for posting this!! I’m going to try what you said and I really really hope it’s eggs and not my gallbladder!