Belovo presents Columbus®, The Heart’s Choice

To produce Columbus Eggs we have gone back to the type of diet that the modern hen’s ancestors would have eaten in the wild, composed mainly of seeds and green leaves.
Our unique, totally vegetarian diet, produces eggs with all the expected nutritional benefits - rich in protein, vitamins and minerals - but also with a perfectly balanced and healthy composition of fats.

Table 1. Schematic of the relative contribution of different dietary fatty acids (saturated fatty acids, w6 and w3 polyunsaturated fatty acids) to the human diet some 4 millions years ago and possible changes subsequent to modern agriculture and industrial food processing, involving fattening of animal husbandry and hydrogenation of fatty acids (adapted from Leaf, A., Weber, P.C. (1987) Am. J.Clin. Nutr., 45(suppl.), 1048-53).

How can fat be healthy ?

It is well known that saturated fats are bad for us and polyunsaturated fats good, what is less well known is that of the two types of polyunsaturated fats, omega-6 (w6) and omega-3 (w3), we eat plenty of w6 and not enough of w3, when in fact they should balance.  Columbus Eggs contain twice as much polyunsaturated fats as standard eggs and have an exact balance of w6 and w3.
Scientific trials have shown that one can eat as many as two or three Columbus Eggs a day without increasing one’s cholesterol level whilst actually reducing the amount of fat circulating in one’s blood.
There is more good news - Columbus are not only healthier eggs, their light taste and texture is absolutely delicious - a discovery in itself.

Discover The New World of Healthier Eggs

The relative amount of saturated fatty acids in chicken eggs is a constant of about 30-35%, whatever the type of  feed the chickens are given.  On the other hand, the concentrations of mono- and poly-unsaturated fatty acids are mutually competing and dependent upon the feed composition.
The standard egg contains much monounsaturated (M = 55%) and relatively few polyunsaturated (P = 15%) fats, together with a high w6:w3 ratio (> 20) (table 2).  These figures result from modern feed habits based on animal and vegetable fats of almost exclusively the Omega-6 type.

 Table 2. w6-containing vegetable oils and standard eggs

(% of triglycerides)

Standard eggs belong to the major family of w6-rich dietary vegetable fats and oils showing trace amounts (< 1%) of w3 fatty acids.  The corresponding w6:w3 ratio of a diet whose fat contribution is mainly composed of these food ingredients is high to very high and in total contrast with the balanced (1:1) ratio upon which the human biology was initially determined (Table 1). Epidemiological and scientific studies have accumulated evidence of a potential correlation between long term imbalance in the dietary w6:w3 ratio and the appearance of certain chronic diseases characteristic of our society, including cardiovascular, inflammatory and auto-immune diseases.
Through an appropriate feeding of the chicken, it is feasible to readjust the w6:w3 ratio in eggs so that they present a balanced fatty acid composition comparable to the original ‘wild-type food’ available to early man.  As a lipid source, Columbus thus belongs to the minor family of w3-rich fats and oils and lies in between those from vegetable and fresh water fish origins (table 3). 

Table 3. w3-containing vegetable and fish oils and Columbus

(% of triglycerides)

Source: The Lipid Handbook, 2^nded, 1994, Chapman & Hall.

Some green-leaf vegetables (spinach,...) also contain w3-rich lipids but their contribution to the total dietary energy intake is usually small.  Columbus eggs and river fish deliver a minimum of 70% unsaturated fatty acids (the healthy one), equal amounts of both w6 and w3 PUFA (w6:w3 = 1:1) and non-negligible amounts of animal-derived w3 LC-PUFA in a favourable ratio (w6:w3 = 0.3:1)(table 4).

Table 4. PUFA and LC-PUFA in Columbus egg and wild-river fish