Production of Heart-healthy Eggs through Dietary Manipulations of Hens

Abstract

Changes in life style of people have led to increase in incidence of diseases such as heart failure, hypertension and diabetes. As a result, today's consumer is becoming aware of usefulness of functional foods. Eggs are considered to be complete food, but clinicians and dieticians are concerned about their cholesterol content. Hence, a large population of the world is unable to have the benefits of eggs. This paper reviews the feeding strategies by which egg can be converted into healthy product for heart. Fatty acid composition of egg yolk can be altered, by feeding chromium, marine algae, rapeseed and flax seed or their corresponding oils. While altering polyunsaturated fatty acids of yolk, antioxidants such as vitamin E are also supplemented. This not only adds to the nutritional value of eggs, but also improves the shelf-life of eggs and egg products. Chromium can be used for production of low cholesterol eggs and using such eggs can also avoid/delay/decrease the severity of diabetes. Low cholesterol eggs and conjugated linoleic acid rich eggs have also been patented by scientists. Most of the polyunsaturated fatty acid modifiers (except some herbs) reduce the sensory acceptability of eggs and performance of hens. So, more research is required to be done to establish the use as polyunsaturated fatty acid modifiers. The use of marine algae for producing docosahexaenoic acid rich eggs is promising, but it is also required to be thoroughly researched because some algal species accumulate certain heavy metals in higher concentration than surroundings. Although low cholesterol, high vitamin and high docosahexaenoic acid eggs are available in some metro cities of India, at relatively very high cost, the producers of these eggs have their 'trade secrets'. These eggs are not available to the average population of the country. Therefore, more research should be conducted on the use of locally available materials, combined with robust technology so that the poultry farmers can adopt the method of producing designer eggs so that these eggs are available to common man at reasonable cost. This would also improve economic status of poultry farmers.