Study: Don't Forget The Yolk After Exercise
In a society that is slowly realizing that dietary fat is essential for wellness and low-fat diets are absolutely not the best route to go for optimal health, more information about the importance of dietary fat is becoming evident. A new study out of the University of Illinois is showing this importance and how it relates to optimizing the benefits of resistance training.
The Study:
This study was a crossover trial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It monitored 10 resistance-trained men after exercise and compared biomarker responses of those who ate whole eggs vs. those who only ate the egg whites.
The Findings:
This study found that whole-egg ingestion increased protein synthesis more than just the egg whites.
What Does This Mean?
This means that whole food sources, consisting of protein as well as nutrient-dense fat sources (whole eggs) is a better way to stimulate protein synthesis than a protein source alone (egg whites). This is important to note when wanting to optimize recovery and muscle building after exercise. So next time you are cooking breakfast after a workout, don't forget the yolk.
Reference:
Stephan van Vliet, Evan L Shy, Sidney Abou Sawan, Joseph W Beals, Daniel WD West, Sarah K Skinner, Alexander V Ulanov, Zhong Li, Scott A Paluska, Carl M Parsons, Daniel R Moore, Nicholas A Burd. Consumption of whole eggs promotes greater stimulation of postexercise muscle protein synthesis than consumption of isonitrogenous amounts of egg whites in young men. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2017; 106 (6): 1401 DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.117.159855