Eating 3 Eggs a Day Makes You Kinder, According to Study

A new study from the Leiden Institute for Brains and Cognition in the Netherlands revealed that eating an omelette made of three eggs daily affects a person's demeanor, actually making them kinder, International Business Times reported.

The researchers discovered that eggs contained an amino acid called tryptophan or TRP, which reacted with chemicals from the brain and making people twice as charitable and donate twice as much.

The Dutch research team shared that they wanted to investigate the administration of the compounds contained in various foods, such as soy, milk, fish and eggs, all of which somehow contributed to charitable donating.

"Our study is the first demonstration that charitable donating can be enhanced by serotonin-related food supplements," the team said.

In their research, they picked 32 women and men, with 16 of them receiving a powder that contained 0.8 grams of TRP, a similar amount to what was found in three eggs, while the other 16 received a placebo powder, according to The Independent.

They were instructed not to drink or eat anything except for water the night before the experiment. They were also prohibited from taking any drugs or alcohol for the length of the study, according to Stuff.

For taking part in the study, all the participants were paid €10 (around $11), but were also asked if they were willing to donate their pay to charity. The team left donation boxes for the Unicef, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and World Wildlife Fund on a table and allowed the participants to decide, according to Independent.

After counting the money, the researchers found that the group who were given the powder with TRP donated, on average, twice as much as those who received the placebo powder.

The exact effect of the TRP is not clear, though the researchers theorized that part of it had something to do with a person's oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone" that promoted pro-social behavior.

The team pointed out that the areas of the brain associated with oxytocin are close to those associated with serotonin. They said, "It may be likely that the willingness to donate money to a charity is modulated by the effect that serotonin exerts on oxytocin levels."

"Our results support the materialist approach that 'you are what you eat," the authors of the study also stated. "This is the idea that the food one eats has a bearing on one's state of mind. The food we eat may thus act as a cognitive enhancer that modulates the way we deal with the 'social' word."