Cooked or Raw Eggs for Muscle Recovery?

Ever since Rocky gulped back a glass of raw eggs, it’s been debated as to whether uncooked or cooked eggs are superior for muscle recovery. Surprisingly, no studies have been available to answer this question about cooked or raw eggs. Until now. 

A paper titled “Raw eggs to support postexercise recovery in healthy young men: Did Rocky get it right or wrong?” outlines what a team of researchers from the Netherlands found out. In the study, 45 healthy men familiar to resistance exercise ingested either five raw eggs or five boiled eggs (about 30 grams of protein total) after a whole-body weight training session. Researchers then took multiple blood samples and muscle biopsies over a 5-hour postexercise-and-postprandial period to assess the amino acids that were circulating around. They also looked at the acute muscle growth response. 

Tests showed that more of the muscle-stimulating amino acids present in eggs became available in the body after ingesting boiled eggs compared with raw. This makes sense, as eggs contain several proteins that are known to inhibit protein breakdown by impacting certain digestive enzymes. Some of these proteins may be partly denatured (broken down) by heating, so the digestibility (and therefore immediate usability) of the protein is increased with cooking. 

However, for the muscle growth response (i.e., muscle protein synthesis), no differences between raw or boiled egg ingestion were detected. Therefore, if the goal is muscle growth, raw or cooked eggs may work equally well. Still, most people would probably prefer to eat cooked eggs after a workout because of the taste and texture, as well as the lower risk for salmonella infection. 

See also: Egg Whites or Whole Eggs for Muscle Building?