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!
Thanks for your eggscellent and valuable info. I too have suddenly developed problems with eggs amd thought it was just me so thanks a mill
Interesting. I have the same issues as most of the people responding. I figured it out about a year ago. Not eating eggs has changed my life for the better. I'm 56 and have always had food issues but the eggs were the worst. Thank you for the article and the time and distress documenting.
Thank you for writing this!! I also have a weird egg intolerance, which hits me minutes after I eat them. In my case, I get severe brain fog and tiredness, which lasts for a day. It only happens with certain brands of eggs and old eggs and when I have them first thing in the morning. I couldn’t find any good reason for this since I don’t seem to react to all eggs in this way, but it’s good to know that others have similar experiences!!
Hi Amy, Thank you for your post. Your article and subsequent comments from people are all very informative and interesting.
I was researching because I got the familiar upper stomach pain/indigestion, excessive belching, nausea and generally feeling off after consuming eggs this morning, that were followed by a Latte Coffee (made with reduced fat milk).
It appears I can eat eggs (I do always prefer them a little well done) , but I can't combine them with a Milky Latte coffee. I am currently 54 years of age and this is something that seems to have changed as I have got older.
Interestingly the reaction that I now get to the egg/coffee combination is a similar reaction that I get to two other foods.
At about 27 years of age (after eating them all my life) I developed an intolerance to Banana and at about 45 years of age I developed an intolerance to Avocado. I adore both these foods. I can however, consume Banana bread/cake (that does have real fresh mashed banana as one of its ingredients in the cake mix) and not experience any reaction.
I thought I would post the above as additional information to you and your readers. I also wonder if anyone has any remedy suggestions that might help solve/alleviate the discomfort when it occurs.
Kind regards, Deborah (from Australia)
Thank you! Its 2022, do you still eat liquid eggs and are they still working? I am trying this today!
I do! Usually at fast food restaurants. I did try the one brand of liquid whole eggs I could find (Vital Farms), and while they didn't bother my stomach at all, they also didn't taste *quite* the same as fresh whole eggs.
Amy! I have been waiting for this post for 20 years! At first, I thought it was that a typical American breakfast was too rich for me: bacon, buttered toast, eggs. Over the years I narrowed it down to eggs. I always buy free range pasture eggs but even with those I have issues. Weirdly, I can usually eat eggs cooked any way at night, but not during the day. But after I read your post I realized that I can eat a frittata in the morning so I think you’re right that well cooked eggs are fine to eat. It is so gratifying to read your post and all the comments! I’ve searched online once a year or so for an answer to this odd dilemma for a very long time and this is the first time I’ve come up with anything that makes sense! Thank you!
You're so welcome! I don't always respond to every comment, but I hope people reading this know that EVERY SINGLE TIME I get a comment saying that this post helped, it makes my day. Seriously.
Thanks for this article! It gives me a lot to think about. Like many others have said, it's a relief to know I'm not alone in this. I have had digestive issues for ages... been to the doctor and done tests, found nothing... tried eliminating gluten and lactose, achieved nothing. I have noted many times that I feel sick almost immediately after eating eggs, especially scrambled (and I use the cheapest grocery store eggs), but have never tried eliminating them from my diet or drawing lines between different cooking methods and my symptoms. I will be trying that next!
In your own experience, does mayonnaise have any effect on you? I incorporate mayo into most sandwiches and deli-style salads, so that's another way that eggs regularly appear in my diet. If fast food sandwiches aren't usually an issue, though, perhaps the way that egg yolks are processed for mayo production eliminates whatever it is that makes many of us feel ill...
Amazingly, mayo gives me no issues! Although I've only tried either packaged mayo (which like you mention, probably has something added or done to it to make it last outside of the fridge), or making my own with the expensive eggs. Not sure what would happen if I made it with the cheap eggs!
Thank you for this article. If I eat eggs a certain way about an hour or so later I am running to the bathroom. If I eat an omelet it doesn't bother me. This morning had two sunnyside up and headed to the bathroom about an hour later. Never had a problem with eggs until about a year ago.
Goodness. This is what I needed. I thought I was crazy. But I had a breakfast burrito today and about 3 hours later, my stomach just went nuts like it does every so often. I'm gonna go off them and see. I don't have them often but enough to make me sick. Thanks for this. Described myself
Im literally laying in bed, felling like I’m going to die after eating eggs. Happens every time. I’m glad to have found someone that understands me.
Wow! So helpful! So many different stories and the effects eggs have on different individuals. I've never really liked eggs because in any whole form/cooking method (not baked goods) I don't feel good. It's gotten especially worse since I went low carb a few months ago and my egg intake has dramatically increased. Before finding this site this morning I ate two hard boiled eggs. Ugh! Nauseous, backache, dizzy... My last egg purchase was Costco, cage-free, white. And as I think back I've been feeling especially bad with this new purchase of eggs. Mystery solved. I'm glad I don't like eggs enough to test which work for me and which don't. I'm going to avoid eggs altogether! Best wishes to you all! Thanks for helping me solve the mystery!
@Jen, oh wow, I came across this article in exactly the same situation as you!! I went low-carb again recently and had two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast and am feeling miserable lying on the couch googling for answers. I’m also just going to avoid eggs going forward!
I wasn’t searching for this topic but it found me in my Google feed! Thank you so much for writing this article, and thank you to the many people who have commented with their stories too. I genuinely thought I was going crazy a few years ago when I said to my husband “I think eggs are making me really sick sometimes”. Despite the “you’re crazy” look on his face, I knew that some eggs, for some reason, had begun making me quite ill a little while after eating them. This happened after a lifetime love affair with eggs prepared every way imaginable with no problems. Still to this day I haven’t figured it out fully but I’ve learned certain things, like Walmart brand eggs (especially the big boxes of 60) make me terribly sick. I’ve been tested and I’m not allergic to eggs. I’m looking forward to trying some of the experiments you and others in the comments have tried. Thank you again for stopping the “why am I so crazy” nonsense in my head and helping me realize I’m not alone!
Every time I get a comment on this post I get that same feeling all over again - SEE? I'm not crazy!!
OMG I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE! So I lived on eggs for my most common protein source since I can remember. Especially when I was pregnant, heavy red meats often made my stomach heave, poultry was just too chickeny a lot of the time, but eggs were great. In pregnancy you’re supposed to only consume well cooked foods.
But when I had my baby, I could start eating over-easy eggs again! Yay, I love runny yolks, the perfect dip with hash browns and ham! I thought I was just having a postpartum adjustment when my stomach was cramping almost worse than labor, I was breathless and so miserable. Then one morning all I had eaten was over easy eggs… and it dawned on me as my intestines felt they were being scraped with glass… eggs might be the issue.
So far I’ve discovered it’s only when the eggs aren’t cooked well enough. I don’t know why, but it is sad since egg yolks are literally my favorite. Sigh. Here’s to eggs!
Hi from Australia. My wife loved eggs, no longer, sadly to say. I, her husband for 50 years, no problems with eggs or chicken meat. Thanks for writing and thanks for those that have provided comments, my wife no longer feels alone. Unfortunately, "free range" is in most cases is a joke. 1 (sometimes 10) sq. metre (10 or 100 sq. feet) per hen, nothing (grass or bugs) will have a chance to grow before being eaten. My wife can eat eggs in Bali, no problems. Fresh and I expect the farmers can't afford commercial food, true free range. Portia's soy comment may be true, cheap food filler in Australia and the USA, thanks. My wife has the same problem with eggs in the USA, even from Whole Foods. Recently we could get a few eggs from a lady in country Australia that had a very large nursery garden. The small number of chickens had lots of different bugs to eat plus the kitchen food scraps. Not once was my wife sick with these eggs irrespective of how they were cooked. I could find no comment on chicken meat making people sick. My wife's favorite meat was chicken, sadly, no logger true, except in Bali. Same problem, bad headache and feel sick after eating organic, free range chicken meat in Australia. Fresh organic eggs in a cake OK, provided no smell when cracked. As I have a better sense of smell, I wash the eggs in warm water (remove any dried egg white), dry with a paper towel and crack into an empty cup. I then smell the inside of the egg. If anyone can find out what is in commercial chicken food, please post.
I'm so sorry for your wife's troubles. I don't know what the equivalent category is in Australia, but here in the US my stomach is always OK with pastured eggs (sometimes labeled as eggs from pasture-raised hens). That's our category for what you describe, real outdoor space with bugs to eat. Of course, the price is much higher--I pay almost 60-cents American for one egg! (And I eat a LOT of eggs.) And yes, free range is a joke!
Wow! This is the first time I’ve heard of anything similar to my own experience. I developed this in my 20s after eating over easy eggs all my life, one day they just started causing severe stomach pain and cramping that would ruin my whole day if I ate them. I can eat boiled, over hard or very dry scrambled no problem...it’s so weird. I only eat eggs if I cook them for this reason. I may look into trying fresher eggs and see if that’s the Problem for me. I haven’t had an over easy egg in 12 years