How Do Your Eggs Stack Up?
(Page 3 of 6)
April/May 2007
By Laura Sayre
Pennsylvania State University associate professor Heather Karsten, who has been investigating the relationship between livestock diets and food quality for several years, did a study in 2002 comparing two groups of Hy-Line variety brown egg hens, all sisters, with one group kept in standard industry conditions (crowded indoor cages) and the other group kept on mixed grass and legume pasture. Eggs from the two groups showed similar levels of total fat and cholesterol, but the pastured eggs had nearly three times more omega-3 fats than the caged eggs. The pastured eggs also averaged 62 percent higher in vitamin A and 220 percent higher in vitamin E.
RELATED CONTENT
Learn how to make homemade nutrients (fertilizer) for the plants in your hydroponic garden....
You may not be getting enough of some essential nutrients, and the right multivitamin can help make...
THE HEALTHY PLATE: Recipe for chicken and shiitake mushroom lo mein...
With this unique design, anyone can keep a few chickens, even in small back yards....
How to mix your own chicken feed, including buying mixed ration feed in bulk, feed ratios, protein ...
In 2005, Mother Earth News found similar results after testing eggs from four pastured flocks (all heritage breeds) in Kansas. The pastured eggs had roughly half the cholesterol, almost twice as much vitamin E, two to six times more beta carotene and four times as much omega-3 compared to the standard USDA data. Pastured eggs also typically contain higher levels of carotenoids such as lutein and zeaxanthin, thought to be important to eye health.
This year, Mother Earth News plans to test eggs from several pastured poultry farms around the country. If you keep chickens at home, you’re invited to participate, too. To learn how you can test your eggs’ nutrition and add to a growing body of evidence that pastured hens produce higher quality eggs, visit our Egg page later this spring.
The irony of this type of research is that as soon as a beneficial, naturally occurring factor is discovered, industry researchers look for a way to mimic that factor within commercial systems. Omega-3 concentrations are higher in pasture-raised eggs because of the grasses and forbs, grubs and other insects the hens are eating. But they can be increased in confined birds’ eggs by adding expensive flax seed and fish oil to their diets. (See How to Decode Egg Cartons.) Some commercial producers even add marigold petals to layers’ rations to brighten yolk color.
Whether those substitutions are as healthful as the real thing is open to discussion. “That’s the tragedy really,” says grass-fed expert Jo Robinson, who created the Web site www.eatwild.com to help people understand the benefits of pasture-raised livestock products. “Now you have to be a biochemist to know what’s good for you. It didn’t used to be that way.”
Understanding at least one healthful quality of pasture-raised eggs doesn’t require a degree in biochemistry, Robinson points out: A classic study published in Poultry Science in 1966 found that the color of egg yolks is a perfectly reliable index of carotenoid levels. The more beneficial carotenoids the eggs contain, the darker orange their yolks will be. (See photo.)
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
Next >>
