Are brown eggs better than white eggs?
Brown Eggs
- Thread starter StrangerInAStrangeLand
- Start date
They are attractive, but the chickens that lay them are not as productive in industrial settings.
Where I live the organic farmers have taken to specializing in brown eggs, as a means of keeping their stock separate and their prices higher on the store shelves. So there's beginning to be a sort of image attached to brown eggs, which is not wholly unearned - a chicken that eats bugs and rocks and runs around outside lays better tasting eggs, on average.
But it's a coincidence - if the factory production had specialized in brown eggs, the white ones would enjoy the image boost.
Where I live the organic farmers have taken to specializing in brown eggs, as a means of keeping their stock separate and their prices higher on the store shelves. So there's beginning to be a sort of image attached to brown eggs, which is not wholly unearned - a chicken that eats bugs and rocks and runs around outside lays better tasting eggs, on average.
But it's a coincidence - if the factory production had specialized in brown eggs, the white ones would enjoy the image boost.
It's time to bust this myth.
ALL eggs are white - it's just that different breeds of chickens put on a thin layer of pigment over the shell. That coloration ranges from pink to olive-drab green to blue to brown and with every variation of hue intensity in between. The color was nature's way of providing a degree of camouflage for the unattended eggs.
You can take a brown (or any other color) egg and lightly sand off the pigment leaving a perfectly white egg.
ALL eggs are white - it's just that different breeds of chickens put on a thin layer of pigment over the shell. That coloration ranges from pink to olive-drab green to blue to brown and with every variation of hue intensity in between. The color was nature's way of providing a degree of camouflage for the unattended eggs.You can take a brown (or any other color) egg and lightly sand off the pigment leaving a perfectly white egg.
It's time to bust this myth.
You can take a brown (or any other color) egg and lightly sand off the pigment leaving a perfectly white egg.
Gotta find me a brown egg.
I agree.
An ex-boss' son had about a dozen hens (no idea what breed, but their eggs were brown) and once they all commenced to laying, the family found themselves with more eggs than they knew what to do with.
Being a fine and proper scavenger, I gladly accepted the portion of the surplus he offered me, and I noticed straightaway they were more flavorful than "production line" eggs.
My pet theory was that it was because these chickens had a more varied diet than "factory farm" hens, since they were pretty much "free range" critters, allowed to roam about and eat whatever they could get their beaks on besides the regular feed.
Maybe they were just fresher.
:shrug:
You are both correct. And it wasn't just the degree of freshness, it actually was the varied diet you mentioned. And if you noticed, the yolk is also darker and richer than ordinary commercial eggs. That adds to the overall flavor and contains a wider variety (and better quality) of nutrients as well.
Commercial chickens are fed a diet that consists primarily of corn, soy meal, a small amount of finely ground limestone (or oyster shells) which provides calcium for the shell, along with out-of-date consumer food like crackers, bread and a tiny amount of dried fish meal. They are also given doses of vitamin D (to aid in the metabolism of the calcium) along with antibotics (both through their drinking water) to control disease in their tightly packed living quarters.
A free-ranging bird will eat insects, grass and practically anything else it can find (they are NOT picky in the least!) and that results in the extra nutrients, most notably beta carotene and certain amino acids.
It's probably one reason why the industrial folks settled on white egg producers - pigment production by the chicken reduces its efficiency in converting feed to egg.SAM said:
The industry has this stuff calculated to the milligram.
Note that the best tasting, most nutritious eggs come from the scavenging, barnyard ranging chickens. Anyone whose imagination prevents them from eating pigs is being fairly oblivious in eating eggs and chickens.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
lol......