What's the deal with those raw eggs eaten by Rocky before training

Question

I'm entering on this fitness life now, aged almost 30. I never used to care about it, but I realize I'm late on this as I have stopped all my sporting life and become sedentary. I've been in the gym for about 2 months and I'm learning about training and nutrition stuff. I realized how much feeding before training is important to provide energy so I can put in my best on the activities. I've started eating fruit just before the training and this just made a big difference to my training.

So I started wondering what's the deal with the eggs eaten by Rocky in the first movie, where he eats about 3 raw eggs before starting training.

Answer 1

Eggs, by their nature, have a substantial amount of good protein in them, 6 grams in a large egg, along with the cholesterol and calories needed to sustain exercise. In the 1890s, it was believed that cooking the egg removed some of the nutritional values and this tradition was carried on through the worlds of bodybuilding and boxing as word-of-mouth "truth". I suspect some degree of machismo was involved as well, since many people find raw eggs to be nauseating, so choking them down was a way to demonstrate your self-control. Modern science has since established that humans can absorb 90% of the nutrition in a cooked egg, and only 50% in a raw egg, including the protein. Some exercise and raw-foods gurus have latched onto part of that science and claim raw eggs as a good source of protein with fewer calories, ignoring the reduced protein aspect. And, of course, raw eggs are a potential source of salmonella and e. coli, something they knew at the time of Rocky.

So, in short, it's bad science that was obsolete at the time the movie came out, which has since been discovered to be even more fallacious.

Answer 2

The boxing world - especially in the era where the "Rocky" movies were made - is notoriously bad at developing new methods for nutrition and exercise based on research and findings.

The whole "drink raw eggs, run 5 miles every morning and beat this frozen pig"-method isn't really something you should strive for today.