A weird question i’ll grant you! I’m trying to reduce sodium in my diet for various reasons, this is complicated by having IBS. Turns out eggs are fairly low sodium and also don’t trigger my IBS – result.

However…. I noticed on the egg box today (Sainsburys large eggs), that they are actually ‘amber’ for salt with rating of 0.22g of salt per average boiled egg. Are sainsbury’s correct?

This made me google it and various sites seem to have eggactly what i was looking for, and said that the actual salt content in a large boiled egg is more like 62mg (0.062g)

Having thought i’d cracked it, I then looked at the other numbers, and the amount of salt seems to vary by cooking method. Which doesn’t make much sense to me. A boiled egg has 0.062g, a fried egg has 0.095g, a raw egg 0.071g, and an omelette 0.094g. Does anyone know how an egg can ‘gain’ salt from the cooking process?

Can anyone help lay my fears to rest that my low salt meal is actually quite high salt (i’m having a couple a day for lunch with some rice). This would make me egg-static.

No idea. Ate 5 this morning. Rather greedy. Damn this low carb thing.

I think Sainsbury’s figures are a little eggsalted

You need to shell out for some better eggs.

https://www.egginfo.co.uk/egg-nutrition-and-health/egg-nutrition-information

Just polished off 3 fried egg on toast 😋 didn’t taste salty to me .

 A boiled egg has 0.062g, a fried egg has 0.095g, a raw egg 0.071g, and an omelette 0.094g

That is very odd. I suspect at least one of those numbers is a cock-up, but I’m afraid i don’t have henny idea which.
Maybe chick out that link above and see?

IANAN but I can’t see how it can have enough salt to worry about however you cook it, unless you are adding salt during the cooking process.

Hmmm, that british egg site agrees with sainsburys.

The USDA completely disagrees: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/748967/nutrients

You can even drill down to the individual egg they did the sample on! How can they get to completely different results.

IANAN but I can’t see how it can have enough salt to worry about however you cook it, unless you are adding salt during the cooking process.

I’m not, but over the course of the day, half a gram of salt (two eggs according to Sainsbury’s) takes a chunk out of the allowance – aiming for well under 6g / day of salt.

It is weird, it’s a big ol’ difference. American eggs can’t be that different to ours. It appears the vast majority is in the yolk (which is the nicest bit anyway)

https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/much-sodium-yolk-7885.html

A small pinch if its the egg alone, or scrambled. But if you add something like tomato or HP sauce to it those things contain salt.

Are you or sainsbos confusing salt and sodium? The “salt equivalent” is 2.5x higher than the sodium. And/or is one quoting per egg and one per hundred grams (or some other portion size)? IIRC a typical medium egg is just under 50g.

Does the boiled one include the shell?

I have cracked it. US is talking Sodium, UK is talking Salt. Salt is NaCl, hence the difference (40/60 ratio). I mean that is still not as high (coming out at 160mg of salt using that ratio) but it’s much closer.

edit. What Poly said.

probably the oil you fry in.

Anyhoo, I’d a revelation regarding eggs last week.

8 mins(time my vary slight depending on machine and egg size), 180C, air fryer! perfect soft boiled egg! No messing about boiling water! jeenyis!

Sorry, my eggs come from waterfowl so I’ll have to duck out.

Ignore me, it’s not per gram :p

Eggstraordinary quantities. 😆

No messing about boiling water!

Boliing water is definitely messy and complex.

when you fry an egg , you drive water out of the egg matrix. Hence it’s “solids” content go up – so the % of salt rises.
If you poach the egg, it will absorb / retain some water etc …

TBH , I doubt an egg is going to make a huge difference to your salt intake – most comes throw processed food ( about 80%) and a very high % of that is bread.

Could be derived from food source of the chicken laying the egg. So go for a free range organic egg from local supply not a supermarket supplier .

For Eggsample my chucks get real food, veg scraps n organic worms they dig up themselves.
No layers pellets , just sand available in the soil n good olde mud .

when you fry an egg , you drive water out of the egg matrix. Hence it’s “solids” content go up – so the % of salt rises.
If you poach the egg, it will absorb / retain some water etc …

TBH , I doubt an egg is going to make a huge difference to your salt intake – most comes throw processed food ( about 80%) and a very high % of that is bread.

The absolute amount of salt won’t increase tho? They’re implying the actual mg will go up.

Noted on bread, can’t eat it anyway any more 🙁 I started a salt diary which was eye opening – turns out i’m a salt fiend!

The absolute amount of salt won’t increase tho? They’re implying the actual mg will go up.

Noted on bread, can’t eat it anyway any more 🙁 I started a salt diary which was eye opening – turns out i’m a salt fiend!

a) Because they are calculating by a set weight – i.e per 30g egg. and not standardising the figures
b) Is all the info from the same source? Some sources are half boiled.

As I said originally, if you are really worried about 0.02g salt difference in an egg, you might be surprised to find out bread is about 2% salt, and bacon 3.5%. Average level in process foods in the UK has gone down from 1% to around 0.6% now in the UK over the last 5 years or so. 0.02g is not enough to affect your health!

It’s scrambled thinking