Public health researchers from across the United States and Ecuador traveled to an impoverished area to provide undernourished babies with nutritious, inexpensive food packed with protein, vitamins and minerals — otherwise known as eggs.

Worldwide, there are tens of millions of children who have stunted growth, many of whom are impoverished in live in areas where they have limited access to nutritious food. The World Health Organization has attempted to alleviate this issue by providing fortified food products to unfortunate areas. However, these foods are typically fairly expensive for poor families to afford and distribution might not reach certain remote areas of the world.

Eggs, which are cheap and relatively easy to come by, can provide over 50 percent of critical daily nutrients to a baby.

The results of the study, published in the Pediatrics journal, follow the researchers as they pursue their mission in a poor province Ecuador, providing infants with one egg a day in order to study how much of a health impact it will create.

The researchers gathered up pairs of mothers and infants and split them into two separate groups. One group gave their babies, aged six to nine months, one egg a day, while the other group didn’t provide any eggs. Each week, the researchers would show up at the homes of the “egg group,” and gave out eggs to the families.

While in the families’ houses, the researchers would use that time to gather data and information on how well the babies were doing. They would take the height and weight of the babies, while also asking about any medical problems the babies might have.

After six months, the children who consumed eggs every day were significantly taller and larger. Having a diet of eggs reduced growth stunts by 47 percent and were 74 percent less likely to be underweight, the results showed.

In hopes of improving the lives of undernourished populations, the researchers funded a public health awareness campaign in order to inform people about the health benefits of eating eggs. This type of tactic could be helpful in communities where eggs aren’t a common food.

Eggs could even aid in the obesity crisis, as they’re a well-balanced food. If overweight populations who currently eat foods with a high-calorie intake yet are also low in nutrients supplemented these foods for eggs, they’d likely be healthier overall. About Sarah Ulaky