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 always had problems with scrambled eggs. Never been able to have very much of them without feeling sick. Even with the very best scrambled eggs I've ever made, (no milk, no cheese, just a bit of salt, sometimes pepper).
Just this morning, I had about three forkfuls of scrambled eggs and felt absolutely rotten. So nauseous. And it doesn't matter if it's fresh-from-the-chook's-bum.
I have been searching for about 4 years as to why i cant eat eggs for breakfast anymore. I miss them and am hoping fresh eggs will be ok. Thanks for your blog!
After another morning with a nasty headache, upset stomach and dizziness after eating one boiled egg, I decided to do a search on why eggs make me feel so crappy and came across your post.
Being raised on a farm and having eggs and milk as part of our daily diet for years this has me floored.
I have been noticing this for the past couple of years but put it down to eating the eggs on an empty stomach or something I ate with them caused the problem. I can eat things with eggs in them like sauces and baking and waffles, etc but it doesn't seem to matter if they are fried, scrambled or boiled. One day I am sick the next I am not.
My grand daughter raises chickens so I can get fresh still warm from the chicken eggs any time I want and on occasion even they have made me feel ill.
After reading this, I am going to have my doc do some tests so I know for sure.
Now ... It's not all eggs. Have a weakness for McDonald's sausage n egg mcmuffin meals. Usually have one every couple of weeks and no issues ever. Could be the grease from the sausage and the hash browns. Haha
Deborah
Amy you hit the nail on the head. I experienced all that you described.
Thank honey you put a name to my egg issue.
ChristineL
Thank you!
I seem to be having the same issue and I’m so glad I came across your blog post!
I was never a big fan of eggs but I do like them pan fried or boiled over easy (with the yolks still raw). Back in Hong Kong I would cook them like this, or order it this way in restaurants and never had an issue. Also we always brought just the regular cheapest eggs in bulk too.
However I don’t eat them often - like 3-4 eggs per month or even less. But few months ago I moved to Canada - and started experiencing this very bad headache that comes with nausea that lasts for hours up to a whole day... it happens once a week or two.
I thought it might be me staying indoor all the time (it’s been winter the whole time I was here) or dehydration.
It wasn’t until this month I realized it might be eggs. This is so strange... I had one over easy organic egg and a well done regular cheap eggs in the last two weeks. Had the same sick feeling 3-4 hours after eating. And painkillers don’t help , drinking water doesn’t help either... I only felt better after throwing up (sorry!!) this made me thought the cause should be the food I ate. And the only food I had in common in those two occasions are EGGS!! >:(
I don’t know if eggs in Canada is different from its Asian counterparts, or I just suddenly developed this egg intolerance like you do? Or could it be something else entirely?
It was so brave of you to experiment around eggs after the suspicion. I don’t think I’ll be touching eggs for a while now :/
By the way, I’ve had egg and sausage wraps from Tim Houston’s many times and never got sick from those. The scrambled eggs in those wraps are probably more processed then your regular fried eggs in McDonald’s breakfast though! so perhaps the amount of egg ingredients in those wraps were not large enough to make me sick.
Awesome, thank you :-)
I get mild tummy reactions to eggs like 7/10 cases, Mostly boiled eggs, probably as they are older by the time I eat them!?
We have some farmers who sell eggs locally, going to try them straight from the chicken and see if I react :-)
Thanks for the tips and all the comments :-)
Thanks for this article, at lease I know now that I am not alone in this what seems to be "sensitivity" to eggs! Personally, the first time I noticed something was wrong was when I got a terrible stomach ache with nausea after eating an Rx Bar which are mostly egg whites. The first time it happened I didn't know what was going on but felt sick for like 2 or 3 hours afterwards but didn't put 2 and 2 together. I didn't eat an Rx bar for a long while and then tried another one, like I said, not putting 2 and 2 together, this time it was one of the kid ones and the same thing happened! The only conclusion I could draw was that it must be the egg whites in them. Of course, I'm never eating them again! I can eat hard boiled eggs all day and it doesn't bother me but for some reason eating even some dishes with scrambled eggs in them make my stomach hurt! I will stick to pancakes, waffles & oatmeal when eating breakfast at a restaurant from now on! Crazy how your body changes as you get older (48) :( I'm going to have my husband start doing the float test at home even though he has no sensitivity to eggs at all. Just curious to see if a certain pasture raised brand that I buy for him is fresh!
So glad I could help you put 2 and 2 together, as I often have problems doing that myself! And yeah, the changes in my forties have been...interesting. :-/
Hello Amy! My story is like yours and so many others on here. I started having really bad gas, bloating, nausea and I thought it was from meat. I stopped eating meat but kept eating pasture raised eggs from the grocery. I felt sooo sick! I want to throw up. I went away to a little B & B with the hubby and we had their fresh eggs and I didnt have any issues!!! I am now looking for some fresh eggs in my area. Thank you for sharing this post! I still love not eating meat and will continue doing that. I subscribed to your site.
Also I wanted to add that if you take charcoal pills as soon as you realize you ate something that doesn't agree with you it works wonders. The charcoal absorbs everything. Works great for food poisoning too. Just take as needed because it will also absorb vitamins and nutrition in food.
Thank you for your post. I started feeling nauseous today after only having scrambled eggs and avocado. There has been something unagreeable I have been eating but I could not figure it out. Now I'm thinking it could be some of the egg brands I buy. I never thought about the sulfur building in eggs. I know I cannot eat dried fruit with sulfur dioxide it makes me unbearably sick. That would be the same type of sulfur right?
You're welcome! Unfortunately I don't know anything else about sulfur--basically everything I know about this topic is in this post. I don't usually eat dried fruit, that's really interesting that it has sulfur dioxide! I just looked up what other foods have sulfur dioxide in them, and an interesting one was canned coconut milk. I'm about to use that in a recipe, so I'll be looking out for a reaction.
Hello, scrambled eggs this morning and feeling pukey, forgot they make me nauseous. I kinda realised scrambled eggs were a problem for me like a month or two ago and guessed I had developed some random allergy at the age of 25. When I get out of bed I'm gonna see how old they are. And yea eating eggs when used as an ingredient is fine for me, but not scrambled.
I know this article was written over 4 years ago, but I just found it tonight. What you said about restaurant egg product from a carton confirms what I suspected about my own case. I have become unable to eat eggs I fix at home, unfortunately. I used to eat bacon and egg sandwiches with a little mayo, which I fixed at home, but now eggs I fix ANY way (scrambled, boiled, fried, over easy, etc.) give me a stomach ache and diarrhea. BUT I can eat egg sandwiches and scrambled eggs from a restaurant! That includes local diners and fast food restaurants, like McDonald's, Burger King and Bojangles. They must use egg product poured from cartons, I assume. I wonder how this product is made? Can anyone buy such products, or are they only sold for commercial use in restaurants?
I know I've seen them in cartons in giant grocery stores but I can't remember where or when (it was before I had this issue so I wasn't really paying attention). It also makes me wonder if the eggs that are marketed as being safe to eat raw would make a difference. I've never tried them but I should.
I worked in a McDonald's a long, long time ago and we used whole eggs (I must have cracked thousands), but who knows if that's standard in all restaurants. AFAIK, Burger King uses carton eggs.
Wow! The post and the comments were so interesting to read! I found a lot of similarities. I'm allergic to sulfa drugs (Bactrim made me soooo sick when I took it for a bladder infection as a teenager) and about a year and a half ago, right after the birth of my son, I started to get these horrible cramps after breakfast each day! I was nursing my son and my husband and I were eating scrambled eggs every morning. We were eating organic, pastured eggs. I did some searching, and thought it might be the brand, so we tried another non-pastured brand, but the same thing happened. Like others, I also seem to be fine when eating highly processed eggs like in baked goods or eggs that have been heated in the oven in a homemade cake. When my son was 4 months old I gave up eggs because the pain wasn't worth it. Our pediatrician told us to introduce egg yolks around 7 months, and after the 3rd time, my son got really sick. Luckily it wasn't an anaphylactic reaction, but he was projectile vomiting! Since then, my son and I just don't eat eggs. We travel to Iran each year, and last year I ate *something* that gave me those bad cramps, but I'm not sure what it was. I ate a decent amount of bastani (ice cream) so it could've been that, but I also ate intestines the night before (When in Iran, right...? :D). Anyways, I don't think I'm going to try duck or farm fresh eggs, even in Iran, because the pain just isn't worth it for me. I cook completely egg-free and am a huge baker. I use flax, the "wonky cake" recipes and if we are craving scrambled eggs I use tofu!
It seems a lot of triggers are:
-Pregnancy
-Sulfa-allergies
-Old eggs
-Eggs that are not cooked well (like in the oven)
Reading the garlic-allergy post is scary...hopefully after my next baby I don't have to cut out any other foods!
Thanks for the post, hopefully anyone else suffering from this intolerance reads the post and comments and can make an informed decision on what to do going forward.
I've been allergic to garlic since I was 13 - it's awful. The same thing with the nausea and back pain, but it kicks in up to 30mins after I've eaten - then dependent on how much I've had, it's exorcist vomiting and then I have to find somewhere to sleep (snooze time again dependent on volume of garlic consumed).
About 6 months ago, I started getting the same sort of back pain about 3hrs after breakfast every morning. I too thought it was wheat and cut it out but it was still happening. By process of elimination, I then narrowed it down to the eggs but then felt fine one day and not the next... Totally threw me! Then a holiday at the start of this year, I was only ill on the days I had eggs. What I also noticed, was that the strength of the back ache has been increasing every time until I was so ill a few weeks back, I could barely move.
Garlic and eggs have Sulfur in common. I have to credit this as the reason. My garlic allergy started as my body went through changes as a teen but I don't know why I've suddenly developed an egg allergy - I'm so gutted!
I am going to try farm fresh eggs and hope that this is the solution...
Damn, I miss my scrambled eggs at breakfast!
Oh that's awful! And I didn't realize that garlic and eggs had that in common. If I develop a new problem, you've given me a food to look at. Thank you. And good luck trying fresh eggs! My fingers are crossed for you.
Thank you! We have our own flock of chickens and I have noticed over the years that only hard boiled eggs give me diarrhea but all other eggs are fine. Your explanation makes great sense because I use older eggs for baking and hard boiled eggs and the freshest eggs (usually laid that day) for scrambled/fried/etc. I'm guess the process of baking eggs in a cookie probably breaks down a lot of chemicals in the egg so those don't bother me.
The garlic thing makes sense too because garlic gives me a stomach ache too . Looks like I'll be asking my allergist about sulfur allergies. Another common thread I noticed in the comments is the allergies/intolerances developing when pregnant. I have four kids and I've gotten new allergies with each pregnancy. So weird!
Dear Amy, Thanks ever so much for this post. While I do not have any where near the reaction that you and some do to eggs they do make me nauseous most times when I eat them. So I usually just avoid them. Sadly because I do like the taste and they are almost a perfect food. This has been the case since I can ever remember eating them from a very young age. Never had any idea of why. No itching or obvious "allergy" symptoms, just when eating them I can get to a point where I feel like if I eat one more bite I will vomit. Fast forward... at age 23 I moved to a farm and of course have hens for eggs. I tolerate them just fine if in things, just not eggs by themselves. Still the same on and off nausea with them. The hens always have the same food and drink our well water and I NEVER wash eggs until ready to use (only if they need it) I have tried them cooked all ways and not cooked at all. (though I only consume the yolks if eating raw) and still the same on and off nausea. I am deficient in choline and really looking to get some yolks in my diet for that reason... Yesterday am I tried 3 raw yolks in a smoothie, nausea in less than 10 minutes. I decided to have a look around the web to find some reasoning and found this post. Since moving to the farm I have always used the oldest eggs first After reading your post I decided to try some eggs again, despite my experience yesterday. I mixed up the same smoothie this am with eggs that were just laid yesterday afternoon. Voila no nausea! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
Oh my gosh, that makes me so happy! Thank you for letting me know!!
I have the same problem with store bought eggs. I got hens and raised them for their eggs and I didn't have a problem at all. In the winter they get a break from laying and I ate store bought eggs. What a mistake! I got sick all over again.