Heather writes for the St. Petersburg Times teen section, performs in community theater, and plays soccer. She'd love to become a pediatrician because she loves "science and medicine and little people."
With worries about high cholesterol abounding, Heather hypothesized that feeding chickens a raw vegetable diet would decrease the cholesterol content of their eggs, making them more appealing to people with high cholesterol.
Heather procured a Rhode Island Red hen and established a controlled environment in the laboratory. She then fed the hen four different diets: commercial feed, sliced bananas with diced peels, soy meal, and raw vegetables. She kept the chicken on each diet for five consecutive days and then analyzed the last egg laid in each period using a gas chromatograph. The "soy egg" – the egg laid after the soy diet – contained the least amount of cholesterol, 31 percent lower than a typical egg. The egg also had less cholesterol than store-bought eggs advertised as "low cholesterol."
