Foodiness

What are the makings of a great salad? You need fresh greens, of course, and then a layer of colorful vegetables like tomatoes and carrots.

That’s a good start. But to help the body absorb more of the nutrients packed into this medley, you may want to add something else: a cooked egg.

A small study published in May in the American Journal of Clinical Nutritionconcludes that adding eggs to salads makes it easier to absorb the carotenoids in the raw vegetables. Carotenoids are the yellowish-red pigments that give carrots and tomatoes — and lots of other fruits and vegetables — their color. Two famous ones are beta carotene and lycopene. In addition to giving us those pretty colors, they’re also beneficial phyonutrients that help fight inflammation.

For the study, the researchers gave 16 participants raw mixed-vegetable salad with no eggs, a salad with one and a half eggs and a salad with three eggs. They found that the absorption of carotenoids was 3.8-fold higher when the salad included three eggs compared to no eggs.

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