Magic Eggs

(imported from my other blog)

Forgive me for leaping, like a startled springbok, towards fantastical assumptions but I had imagined that the purpose of The Metro was to deliver news. That is to say, that somewhere between its crisp, warm, fingertip muddying early hours to its time tiling the floor and windows of whatever papier mache and pipe cleaner vehicle us proles are riding home to our nests, I expect it to at least attempt to communicate information. I don’t expect much, either, I fully appreciate that it’s meant to be read at half-past-don’t-even-speak-to-me by bleary eyed ne’er-do-wells like me, but I’d like an attempt. A shot. A go. It’s not much to ask. Is it?

Yesterday morning, in “Microcosm” (which is The Metro’s column for science news), there was a festive little piece explaining that the head-cramp, rainbow-yawn and bum-sick which becomes endemic in the UK around “office party” season can be cured by simply gubbing an egg! How easy! Tell me more…

This is, they explain, because “chickens’ eggs” contain “a substance” which combats the toxic effects of acetaldehyde (the metabolite of ethanol that’s held to be responsible for making you feel like you have a pregnant hippo wallowing in the gloopy remnants of your brain).

What is this mysterious substance that makes chicken eggs a magic bullet in the war against beer disease? Boringly, it’s the ubiquitous amino acid cysteine, which is found in most foods that we’d consider, in balanced-diet-speak, “protein”. Cysteine is also considered a non-essential amino acid, which means our body can manufacture it all on its own.
So, where are The Metro getting their information? Well, they tail their story with an optimistic “…a study in the Journal of Inflammation Research found”.
And here is the study.
Seems decent enough for what it is, which isn’t a demonstration of eggs curing a hangover. They fed a potentially fatal dose of acetaldehyde to a bunch of rats, some of which had previously been fed heroic amounts of cysteine (the equivalent of an 80kg man eating 20g of pure cysteine) and found that the rats that weren’t full of cysteine were much more likely to die. So does this mean it’s plausible that an egg will help cure your hangover? Yes. But before we rush to sell an idea to the marketing people at Warninks, let’s be careful what we mean by “plausible” here. This is pub conversation plausible, not breaking news plausible.
Now, talking of breaking news, far be it from me to be an etymological pedant but, this study, deemed worthy of inclusion in a science news column from yesterday, was published in 1974. Thirty four years ago. Is this what passes for mainstream science journalism? I quickly turned to their entertainment pages for an exclusive on the death of Jimi Hendrix, but was denied. Their journalistic bloodhounds have yet to hit the scent of that trail, it seems.
Surely, if it was just a space filler they were looking for they might have found an interesting contemporary story. There are lots of scientists after all, doing lots of science, and some of it is about space, explosions or ferocious animals (unfortunately, not so much of it is about all three).

But, no, it seems there is a more sinister motive. The Metro, I suspect, are in the pockets of some sinister egg baron. Not 24 hours previously, they’d published another “magic eggs cure hangover” story. This time quoting a Dr Andrew Irving in saying that a breakfast of eggs will provide sufficient protein to overcome the hypoglycaemia (rather frighteningly described as “a reduction in blood levels” – enough to put anyone off the pop) of a hangover. Hypoglycaemia is low blood sugar. Eating protein will only combat this in very specific dietary situations, none of which are commonly experienced by your average western adult.

Perhaps I’m over-reacting. I don’t know. It is only The Metro after all, and it was 8am and my patience for bullshit was enfeebled by the unwelcome legacy of the beer I’d had the night before. If only I’d had time to boil an egg…