Does Drinking Raw Eggs Help You Gain Weight

Raw eggs may increase your risk for foodborne illnesses.

Image Credit: Михаил Руденко/iStock/GettyImages The key to gaining weight is consistently eating more calories than your body uses. While raw eggs provide some calories, lots of other healthy foods contain more calories per serving, so simply drinking raw eggs may not be the best way to gain weight.

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 Most important, you can incur serious risks from drinking raw eggs, so this practice isn't recommended.

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  Tip While calories from eggs can help with weight gain, consuming this food raw can lead to serious illness.

Read more: The Safe and Healthy Way to Eat Raw Eggs

Consider Egg Nutrition

To gain a pound, you need to consume an extra 3,500 calories, so to gain 1 pound per week, eat an extra 500 calories per day, as advised by the University of Colorado. You’d have to drink quite a few raw eggs to significantly increase weight gain.

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 According to the USDA, adding two eggs to your diet each day provides 120 calories, which means it would take almost a month of making this dietary change before you gained just 1 pound.

Eggs are a nutritious food to eat when you’re trying to gain weight, however, as they provide a significant amount of protein as well as riboflavin, phosphorus and Vitamin D.

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Eat a Healthy Diet

Including eggs — cooked eggs — as part of a healthy diet plan is linked to helping with weight loss. This is partly due to their relatively high protein content; each egg contains 6 grams of protein, according to the USDA. Eating meals containing 25 to 30 grams of protein can help increase satiety and decrease appetite, according to a review article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in June 2015.

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 Another study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition in June 2013, found that people who ate eggs for breakfast instead of cereal or a croissant, for example, ate fewer calories at other meals during the day.

Include Plenty of Protein

Although higher-protein diets may be helpful for weight loss, this doesn’t mean you want to cut way back on protein if you’re trying to gain weight. You need to eat plenty of protein if you want to add weight as muscle rather than fat.

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 When you get your protein could be as important as how much you consume. A study published in the Journal of Nutrition in June 2014 found that people can build more muscle if they evenly distribute their protein intake over their three main meals rather than eating most of their protein at dinner.

Potential ways to use eggs as part of a weight-gain diet include eating an egg omelet or scrambled eggs for breakfast, adding sliced hard-boiled eggs to your salad or sandwich at lunch or topping a mix of sauteed spinach, tomato and chickpeas with a poached egg for a nutritious protein-rich dinner.

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 Read more: Can You Safely Eat Raw Eggs?

Consume Eggs Safely

Consuming raw eggs — even dipping into raw cookie dough — isn’t recommended, because raw eggs can contain Salmonella bacteria. If the eggs are contaminated, even a smidge can cause foodborne illness. Salmonella symptoms include vomiting, cramps, diarrhea and fever, and can last for up to 10 days, according to the Mayo Clinic.

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 This unpleasant form of food poisoning can lead to death in some patients if the infection gets into the bloodstream. If you need to drink raw eggs or put them in a recipe, such as eggnog, purchase pasteurized eggs, as advised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which have been heat treated to kill any bacteria. However, it's safer to simply eat cooked eggs instead of drinking raw eggs.

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  references
  
      American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "The Role of Protein in Weight Loss and Maintenance"
    
      Journal of Nutrition: "Dietary Protein Distribution Positively Influences 24-h Muscle Protein Synthesis in Healthy Adults"
    
      European Journal of Nutrition: "Variation in the Effects of Three Different Breakfast Meals on Subjective Satiety and Subsequent Intake of Energy and Lunch and Evening Meal"
    
      USDA FoodData Central: "Eggs"
    
      Mayo Clinic: "Salmonella Infection"
    
      U.S. Food and  Drug Administration: "What You Need to Know About Egg Safety"
    
      University of Colorado: "Eating Strategies to Gain Weight"
       




  references
  
      American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "The Role of Protein in Weight Loss and Maintenance"
    
      Journal of Nutrition: "Dietary Protein Distribution Positively Influences 24-h Muscle Protein Synthesis in Healthy Adults"
    
      European Journal of Nutrition: "Variation in the Effects of Three Different Breakfast Meals on Subjective Satiety and Subsequent Intake of Energy and Lunch and Evening Meal"
    
      USDA FoodData Central: "Eggs"
    
      Mayo Clinic: "Salmonella Infection"
    
      U.S. Food and  Drug Administration: "What You Need to Know About Egg Safety"
    
      University of Colorado: "Eating Strategies to Gain Weight"
    




Raw eggs may increase your risk for foodborne illnesses.

Image Credit: Михаил Руденко/iStock/GettyImages

While calories from eggs can help with weight gain, consuming this food raw can lead to serious illness.

      American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "The Role of Protein in Weight Loss and Maintenance"
    
      Journal of Nutrition: "Dietary Protein Distribution Positively Influences 24-h Muscle Protein Synthesis in Healthy Adults"
    
      European Journal of Nutrition: "Variation in the Effects of Three Different Breakfast Meals on Subjective Satiety and Subsequent Intake of Energy and Lunch and Evening Meal"
    
      USDA FoodData Central: "Eggs"
    
      Mayo Clinic: "Salmonella Infection"
    
      U.S. Food and  Drug Administration: "What You Need to Know About Egg Safety"
    
      University of Colorado: "Eating Strategies to Gain Weight"