World Egg Day  is celebrated around the world and helps to raise awareness of the benefits of eggs and their importance in human nutrition.

World Egg Day was established at the IEC Vienna 1996 conference when it was decided to celebrate World Egg Day on the second Friday in October each year.

For centuries, eggs have played a major role in feeding families around the globe. They are an unbeatable package when it comes to versatility and top-quality protein at a very affordable price. And they are also an excellent source of choline, essential in memory and brain development. When you factor in convenience and terrific taste, there is just no competition.

Eggs are one of nature’s highest quality sources of protein, and indeed contain many of the key ingredients for life. The proteins contained within eggs are highly important in the development of the brain and muscles, have a key role to play in disease prevention and contribute to general well being.ny people believe that eating eggs may be bad for your health. Here are some excellent reasons to justify why eating eggs can make you healthier, brainier, leaner and stronger.

1. Eggs help to improve performance

Eggs have a high satiety index, meaning they make you feel full for longer. One large egg supplies 6g of high quality protein and a large variety of essential nutrients, with the exception of vitamin C. This is why teaming up a fruit or orange juice with an egg and whole-wheat/low GI bread provides the perfect breakfast to perform well in a challenging environment.

2. Eggs can help to iron out problems

Many people with mild iron deficiency experience vague symptoms of tiredness, headaches and irritability. Iron is the carrier of oxygen in the blood and plays an important role in immunity, energy metabolism and many other functions in the body. The iron in egg yolk is in the form of heme iron, the most readily absorbable and usable form of iron in food and more absorbable than the form of iron in most supplements.

3. Eggs improve nutrient adequacy of the diet

The nutrient density of eggs makes them a valuable contributor to a nutritious diet. A study among egg vs. non-egg consumers revealed that the diets of the non-egg consumers were more likely to fall short of vitamins A, E and B12. Eggs contributed 10-20% of folate and 20-30% of vitamins A, E and B12 among egg consumers. This study demonstrates the important role one food can play in ensuring nutrient adequacy.

4. Eggs do not increase blood cholesterol

In the 1990s, eggs received a lot of bad publicity due to their cholesterol content of 210mg per egg yolk. Numerous studies have clearly demonstrated the lack of a relationship between egg intake and coronary heart disease. To put things into perspective, it is important to realise that foods high in fat, especially saturated and trans fatty acids have a far greater impact on heart health than cholesterol in food. Eggs should be recognised as an inexpensive, versatile and easily digestible source of protein.

5. Eggs can help to promote weight loss

Eggs with toast have a 50% higher satiety index than regular breakfast cereals. Several studies have reported that starting the day with an egg breakfast increases satiety in overweight people and may help with weight loss.

In one study where a breakfast of bagels, cream cheese and yoghurt were compared to a breakfast of two eggs, toast and jam (same amount of kilojoules), the latter group stayed fuller for longer and reduced their kilojoule intake at lunch by 29%.

At 315kJ per large egg, eggs actually add few kilojoules for all the nutrients they provide. When teamed up with whole grains (for example whole-wheat bread) and fruit or vegetables they are a complete meal, readily available, easy to prepare and inexpensive, making them a useful tool in weight-loss programmes.

6. Eggs help to promote brain health

Choline is a nutrient that facilitates brain development in the foetus and newborn as well as memory function even into old age. Eggs are an excellent dietary source of choline, and one egg per day will provide 28% of a pregnant woman’s choline requirement.

Choline is of extreme importance during pregnancy and lactation when the reserves can be depleted. At the same time, it is the critical period for foetal brain development and lifelong memory enhancement. In experiments with rats, memory function in the aged rat was in part determined by what the mother ate. Mothers, the message is clear – make a lifelong investment and eat your eggs!

7. Eggs help to prevent cataracts and to protect eye sight

A good dietary intake of eggs, spinach and broccoli is associated with a significant decrease in cataracts (up to a 20% decrease) and age-related lens and retinal degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly (up to a 40% decrease).

Eggs are a good source of the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthine, which play an important role in keeping the eyes healthy. It accumulates in the eye where these nutrients protect against some types of harmful, high-energy wavelengths of light. Getting enough lutein and zeaxanthine is therefore very important from childhood onwards throughout the life cycle.

8. Eggs provide the best quality protein

Protein is one of the most important elements of our diet. Our bodies use protein to build new and repair old tissue. Eggs are champions at providing high quality protein. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. Nine of these amino acids cannot be manufactured by the body and must be derived from the diet. A complete protein food contains enough of these nine essential amino acids to promote growth and maintain body tissue.

Egg, milk and meat (including poultry and fish) proteins are all complete proteins, but egg protein is of the highest quality, with a rating of 100. Compared to eggs, milk is rated at 93 and fish and beef at 75. One egg has approximately the same protein content as 30g cooked meat, fish or poultry. And apart from being the most versatile and best source of protein in our diet, it is also the least expensive.

9. Eggs can help to protect our bones

Eggs are one of the few natural food sources of vitamin D, our sunshine vitamin. Vitamin D is essential for calcium absorption and for maintaining optimum bone health. Eggs therefore play a supporting role in the prevention of osteoporosis together with dairy products, our main source of calcium.

10. Eggs promote healthy hair and nails

The hair and nails reflect many biochemical imbalances and shortages in the body. Eggs can help to promote healthy hair and nails because of their high content of sulphur-containing amino acids and the wide array of vitamins and minerals.

Many people report faster growing hair after adding eggs to their diet, especially if they were previously deficient in foods containing zinc, sulphur, vitamin B12 and vitamin A.

International Day of the Girl-Child

The United Nations has dedicated every October 11 as the International Day of the Girl-Child, a strategy adopted by the global body to draw attention to the challenges facing female adolescents all over the world. In devoting this day to the issues of the girl-child, UNICEF has argued that “every child deserves to reach her or his full potential, but gender inequalities in their lives and in the lives of those who care for them hinder this reality.”
Some of the statistics found on the organisation’s website lament that “every year, 12 million girls are married before their 18th birthday. Globally, 1 in 5 girls becomes a mother before that age; nearly 7,000 adolescent girls aged 15 to 24 are infected with HIV every week; [and that] 98 million girls who should be in secondary school are not.”

Though UNICEF’s statistics are based on a global survey, there is no doubt that the findings resonate in Nigeria. The girl-child in Nigeria, especially those born in rural areas, often gets married at a very early age and suffers from a poor basic education system and hostile cultural practices. In some extreme cases, like the insurgency in the North-East, the girl-child’s desire for education can be frustrated by insecurity. The abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State and Dapchi in Yobe State by Boko Haram factions is a clear evidence that the girl-child’s desire for education can be aborted by insecurity.
The failure of the primary health care delivery system in Nigeria negatively affects the girl-child. In both rural areas and urban centres, they do not have access to qualified medical personnel who should handle the peculiar health challenges of the girl-child. They are, therefore, exposed to unwanted pregnancies and all sorts of infections, the most devastating of which is HIV. For some, it is the life-threatening vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) which leaves them with a serious disability after childbirth due to the fact that they are exposed to the excruciating experience of childbirth at a tender age.

Also, there is the nagging crime of rape which is on the increase across the world. In most cases, the victims of rape are the adolescent girl-child. It is shocking that this crime is committed by adults or even elderly persons against young girls, leaving them bruised both physically and psychologically for life. Nigeria has had more than its fair share of this crime, with many unthinkable stories of incest and sex-slavery.
The girl-child faces numerous challenges. But they all represent a challenge to government, women groups and the civil society movements in the country. Government has come up with many initiatives that should encourage the girl-child to pursue knowledge up to the junior secondary school level. Apart from the Universal Basic Education policy, government has established girls-only schools across the country. However, this policy design has been implemented half-heartedly, and schools lack qualified teachers and necessary infrastructure that would make learning impactful. Under such circumstances, the years the girl-child spends at school is considered as a waste because of the low quality of educational attainment and the fact that they would not have acquired skills that expose them to job opportunities. For those who press on to complete the senior secondary school, the story is not usually too different. As a result, many parents would quickly give out their daughters in marriage at the slightest opportunity to do so.
Government should step up its commitment to the quality of basic education. Also, primary health care hospitals should be funded and made functional so that the girl-child can easily access medicare necessary for their delicate and peculiar health issues. The executive and judiciary should ensure that the Child Rights Act is implemented all over the country, and child abuse, especially rape, is visited with severe punishment. These measures, and many more, if taken seriously by the authorities will help to meliorate the plight of the girl child in Nigeria.