Have you had any experience using duck eggs (or other types of eggs) with patients who do not tolerate eggs well?

Laura Schoenfeld: That’s an interesting question. I’ve had a couple of clients that seem to do fine with duck eggs as opposed to chicken eggs, so my assumption is that it’s more of a protein issue. Egg whites tend to be a lot more problematic as far as food sensitivities are concerned compared to egg yolks, so I kind of take two different approaches with somebody that has egg sensitivity. We’ll either try just the yolk, so they’ll either do a hard-boiled egg that they pop the yolk out of or they’ll be very careful about separating the yolk from the white and have very little white attached to the yolk when they try it. Or we can try something like duck eggs or quail eggs. I don’t really know what other eggs that people would be eating. I know technically you can eat ostrich eggs, but that’s obviously not something that somebody is going to be eating a lot of. It’s one of those things that I’ve seen it happen, so I’m not going to say it doesn’t work, but I wouldn’t just assume that a patient that doesn’t tolerate eggs is going to tolerate duck eggs. So just be really careful. Just tell them to go really slow, maybe have, like, half an egg at a time to see if they tolerate it, or start with the yolks—even with the duck eggs, start with the yolks—to see if they tolerate the yolks. If they tolerate the yolks, then you can try adding whites in. If they tolerate both, then great. If they have any sort of reaction to the yolk, you should assume they’ll probably react to the white as well, and there’s really no reason to be eating egg whites on their own anyway. It’s going to be a “patient has their own experience” kind of situation, and there’s no definite, yes, they will tolerate duck eggs or, no, they won’t if they don’t tolerate chicken eggs.