Egg Nutrition: Decoding Egg Cartons

Are you confused about egg nutrition? Contrary to what many people think, eating the healthiest eggs can be a part of a healthy diet. There is much misinformation about which eggs are the best.

Visually, a good quality, fresh egg should have a firm bright yellow yolk (not runny)and the shells should be thick.

Well, now comes the tough part. Of all the different eggs available in the grocery store, which are the healthiest eggs?

Here are the most common label claims found on egg cartons and what each one means:

Cage Free, Free Range or Free Roaming

Hens that are free range or free roaming are allowed access to the outside, according to the USDA. This means they are raised in large flocks in big open warehouses, rather than in stacked cages. They can move around, but access to the outdoors is very limited, if even available.

Certified Humane

These hens are uncaged, having access to perches, nest boxes and dust bathing areas. Access to the outdoors is not required. There are also limits to the amount of hens that can be contained in any given area. No starvation is allowed to induce molting. Beak trimming but not debeaking is allowed.

These hens are fed a strickly organic, vegetarian diet, without the use of antibiotics and are cage free. Debeaking is allowed and they can be starved to induce molting. They must be raised under conditions that accomodate their health and natural behavior. Again, outdoor access is questionable. This may look like having access to a door that leads outdoors.

Omega 3

All eggs contain omega 3 fatty acids. How much is determined by their diet. So these hens' diets are supplemented with fish oil, flax seed or alfalfa meal. Allowing the birds to forage on pasture also results in a higher level of omega 3's in the yolk.

The fate of industrialized chickens is very sad and inhumane.Male chicks are immediately killed, sometimes ground up into pet food. Female chicks may have a worse fate: beaks burned or sliced off to keep them from pecking each other to death; fed a standardized, horrible, commercial feed laced with antibiotics(and most likely, GMO's) housed in crowded buildings with no access to sunlight or the outdoors; force-molted by food-deprivation to increase egg production; and then killed when production begins to fall-off even slightly.

By far, the healthiest eggs come from your local farmer. These hens are usually allowed to roam freely and subsist on their natural diet consisting of grubs, worms and insects.

Now your challenge for optimal egg nutrition! Find a farmer in your area that raises chickens humanely. Get to know him/her and support them by buying their eggs. They will be pleased and you will reap the benefits of a healthier diet.

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