Health
How to Boil an Egg? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Recipe.
A colleague approached Ernesto Di Maio, a materials scientist in Naples, Italy, and an expert in plastic foams, with a blunt suggestion: “You should do something cooler.” The colleague had a project in mind, Dr. Di Maio recalled. He wanted a perfectly boiled egg.
The task was harder than it might seem, as many home cooks know. The yolk and the egg white, or albumen, have different chemical compositions, which call for different heating temperatures. Dr. Di Maio and his colleagues also welcomed the chance to one-up the Michelin-star chef Carlo Cracco, an egg evangelist who charges $52 for an egg yolk dish at his restaurant in Milan.
The scientists devised a way of cooking an egg that requires no special culinary skill or fancy gadgets. It took about 300 eggs, though the researchers “didn’t eat all of them,” said Pellegrino Musto, a polymer expert at the National Research Council of Italy.
The researchers said their method, published on Thursday, preserves the distinct textures of the egg as well as its nutritional value.
The two parts of the egg require different cooking temperatures because they have different chemical components. “The albumen is mainly composed of water and proteins,” said Emilia Di Lorenzo, a graduate student in Dr. Di Maio’s lab at the University of Naples Federico II who recently published a paper on foaming pizza. “Yolk, on the other hand, is much richer in nutrients.”
Hard-boiling an egg is a popular approach that calls for at least 10 minutes of immersion in boiling water. That is long enough for the yolk to be thoroughly cooked. But it’s also plenty of time for the albumen’s proteins to unfold and clump, expelling water molecules as they become heated. The approach can also create a green ring around the yolk, which indicates the presence of smelly ferrous sulfide.
“Many times people say that they don’t like the rubberiness of the egg white, or the graininess of the yolk in a hard-boiled egg,” said Nelson Serrano-Bahri, a chef and the director of innovation at the American Egg Board, the egg industry’s main trade association, which has lately been dealing with soaring prices and worries about the bird flu.
A soft boil, on the other hand, needs a much shorter cooking period. That keeps the albumen from turning hard — but may also keep the yolk too soft. Ms. Di Lorenzo explained that the yolk is rich in lipids which, when heated, become more fluid. Though some people prefer a runny yolk, others find it revolting.
A third method, known as sous vide, cooks an egg for an hour in a water bath of 150 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the ideal temperature for the yolk, but the prolonged exposure is less optimal for the albumen because the water is not hot enough to denature its proteins.
Ms. Di Lorenzo was blunt about the sous vide approach: “It’s runny. I am not a big fan.”
The scientists’ new method, derived with the help of fluid dynamics software, calls for alternating between boiling and lukewarm water: The egg gets two minutes in 212-degree water, followed by two minutes at 86 degrees, with the cycle repeated eight times. Dr. Di Maio explained that the average temperature of the two immersions, 150 degrees, is ideal for the yolk, while the hotter bath is sufficient to cook the albumen.
“The very key of our method is to have a well-cooked albumen without wasting the yolk,” Dr. Di Maio said.
Relative to the other methods, the periodic baths did a better job of preserving the egg’s nutrients, the study found. The authors noted a higher concentration of polyphenols, compounds that protect against DNA damage.
“It’s probably brilliant — but who is the method for?” asked Deb Perelman, who runs the popular Smitten Kitchen blog. “For home cooking, there’s always a necessary balance of perfect versus a reasonable effort.”
Her preferred foolproof method involves a long ice bath after the egg is cooked. In a recipe for The New York Times, J. Kenji López-Alt proposed steaming the egg in a single inch of water.
“It’s a matter of taste,” Ms. Di Lorenzo said. If science is universal, food is deeply personal. Some people even eat raw eggs.
There is one big drawback to the new Italian technique. “It’s more difficult to peel the periodic egg because everything is softer,” Dr. Di Maio said.
But Mr. Serrano-Bahri said that the Egg Board was on the case. “We are running a study to figure out that,” he said. “I could have an answer for you in the coming months.”
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A new report by the American Heart Association (AHA) included some troubling predictions for the future of women’s health.
The forecast, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, projected increases in various comorbidities in American females by 2050.
More than 59% of women were predicted to have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% currently.
The review also projected that more than 25% of women will have diabetes, compared to about 15% today, and more than 61% will have obesity, compared to 44% currently.
As a result of these risk factors, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7%.
The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7% by 2050. (iStock)
Not all trends were negative, as unhealthy cholesterol prevalence is expected to drop to about 22% from more than 42% today, the report stated.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist and founder of Step One Foods in Minnesota, commented on these “jarring findings.”
“The fact that on our current trajectory, cardiometabolic disease is projected to explode in women within one generation should be a huge wake-up call,” she told Fox News Digital.
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“Hypertension, diabetes, obesity — these are all major risk factors for heart disease, and we are already seeing what those risks are driving. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, eclipsing all other causes of death, including breast cancer.”
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. and around the world. (iStock)
Klodas warned that heart disease starts early, progresses “stealthily,” and can present “out of the blue in devastating ways.”
The AHA published another study on Thursday revealing one million hospitalizations, showing that heart attack deaths are climbing among adults below the age of 55.
The more alarming finding, according to Klodas, is that young women were found more likely to die after their first heart attack than men of the same age.
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“This is all especially tragic since heart disease is almost entirely preventable,” she said. “The earlier you start, the better.”
Children can show early evidence of plaque deposition in their arteries, which can be reversed through lifestyle changes if “undertaken early enough and aggressively enough,” according to the expert.
Moving more is one part of protecting a healthy heart, according to experts. (iStock)
Klodas suggested that rising heart conditions are associated with traditional risk factors, like smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
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Doctors are also seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Klodas noted that these are sex-specific risk factors that don’t typically contribute to complications until after menopause.
The best way to protect a healthy heart is to “do the basics,” Klodas recommended, including the following lifestyle habits.
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Klodas especially emphasized making improvements to diet, as the food people eat affects “every single risk factor that the AHA’s report highlights.”
“High blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excess weight – these are all conditions that are driven in part or in whole by food,” she said. “We eat multiple times every single day, which means what we eat has profound cumulative effects over time.”
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health,” a doctor said. (iStock)
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health.”
The doctor also recommends changing out a few snacks per day for healthier choices, which has been proven to “yield medication-level cholesterol reductions” in a month.
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“Keep up that small change and, over the course of a year, you could also lose 20 pounds and reduce your sodium intake enough to avoid blood pressure-lowering medications,” Klodas added.
“Women should not view the AHA report as inevitable. We have power over our health destinies. We just need to use it.”
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Nearsightedness (myopia) is skyrocketing globally, with nearly half of the world’s population expected to be myopic by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
Heavy use of smartphones and other devices is associated with an 80% higher risk of myopia when combined with excessive computer use, but a new study suggests that dim indoor lighting could also be a factor.
For years, scientists have been puzzled by the different ways myopia is triggered. In lab settings, it can be induced by blurring vision or using different lenses. Conversely, it can be slowed by something as simple as spending time outdoors, research suggests.
Nearsightedness occurs when the eyeball grows too long from front to back, according to the American Optometric Association (AOA). This physical elongation causes light to focus in front of the retina rather than directly on it, making distant objects appear blurry.
The study suggests that myopia isn’t caused by the digital devices themselves, but by the low-light environments where they are typically used. (iStock)
Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry identified a potential specific trigger for this growth. When someone looks at a phone or a book up close, the pupil naturally constricts.
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“In bright outdoor light, the pupil constricts to protect the eye while still allowing ample light to reach the retina,” Urusha Maharjan, a SUNY Optometry doctoral student who conducted the study, said in a press release.
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“When people focus on close objects indoors, such as phones, tablets or books, the pupil can also constrict — not because of brightness, but to sharpen the image,” she went on. “In dim lighting, this combination may significantly reduce retinal illumination.”
High-intensity natural light prevents myopia because it provides enough retinal stimulation to override the “stop growing” signal, even when pupils are constricted. (iStock)
The hypothesis suggests that when the retina is deprived of light during extended close-up work, it sends a signal for the eye to grow.
In a dim environment, the narrowed pupil allows so little light through that the retinal activity isn’t strong enough to signal the eye to stop growing, the researchers found.
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In contrast, being outdoors provides light levels much brighter than indoors. This ensures that even when the pupil narrows to focus on a nearby object, the retina still receives a strong signal, maintaining healthy eye development.
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The team noted some limitations of the study, including the small subject group and the inability to directly measure internal lens changes, as the bright backgrounds used to mimic the outdoors made pupils too small for standard equipment.
Researchers believe that increasing indoor brightness during close-up work could be a simple, testable way to slow the global nearsightedness epidemic. (iStock)
“This is not a final answer,” Jose-Manuel Alonso, MD, PhD, SUNY distinguished professor and senior author of the study, said in the release.
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“But the study offers a testable hypothesis that reframes how visual habits, lighting and eye focusing interact.”
The study was published in the journal Cell Reports.
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