Daily Times

Which of these came first: eggs or chicken? While we have all brainstormed to answer this question, it’s time we think about it from a health perspective.

What is best for dinner? Eggs or chicken? For every health and fitness enthusiast, dinner is the most important part of the diet. While it is always recommended to keep the dinner as light as possible, on the other hand many experts recommend custom made dinner plans as per an individual’s appetite.

WHY SHOULD DINNER BE LIGHT? — there are several reasons behind this, though most of which direct towards weight loss. Biologically, keeping the dinner light and early will regulate your calorie intake by restricting it for a duration of almost 10 hours before you have the next meal. Considering a person’s sleeping hours which is mostly for 8 hours, if dinner is completed two hours before the bed time, one is actually having exactly 10 hours of no-calorie intake. This helps in fat loss. It puts the body through a phase of ketosis, when the body uses stored fat for energy. This helps in losing weight. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism of the Endocrine Society found that the diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), a measure of how well human metabolism is working, depends on the meal time. A meal is eaten for breakfast, regardless of the number of calories it contains, creates twice as high diet-induced thermogenesis as the same meal consumed for dinner, the study found. This study confirmed the significance of eating heavy breakfast and light for dinner.

NUTRITIONAL VALUES OF EGGS & CHICKEN — egg is a low calorie food. One egg has only 75 calories, seven grammes of protein, five grammes of fat, 1.5 grammes of saturated fat, iron, vitamins, minerals and carotenoids. One serving of chicken breast, which is almost 85 grams in weight, consists of 122 calories, 24 grams of protein, three grammes of fat, no carbs and other essential elements like niacin, selenium, phosphorus, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, riboflavin, zinc, thiamine, potassium and copper. Apart from their role in weight management, chicken and eggs are widely eaten across the world, because they are low cost food and are easy to cook. With tonnes of recipes available, one can easily steam a chicken breast or an egg within a few minutes.

EGGS OR CHICKEN FOR DINNER? — depending on the nutrient composition, the ease of being digestible, the way your body processes it and the type of recipe that you are cooking it into, one can eat egg and chicken for dinner. For example, a grilled chicken with some seasonal vegetables is a super healthy dinner, while a fried chicken is not. A stir fried chicken with some vegetables is good for digestion and is ideal for dinner whereas store-bought rotisserie chicken is not. Regarding eggs, there are several views on whether it is an ideal dinner food or not. This protein dense food is not recommended by many for dinner. Eggs are a low-carb, low-calorie and low-cost source of protein which essentially make them the best source of food but for people who have gastroesophageal reflux disease having an egg can disturb their sleep. On the other hand, the tryptophan, melatonin, and vitamin D present in eggs induce sleep in many. Therefore, depending on how your body can handle eggs, you may or may not include it in your diet.