Okay but there actually is a pretty significant difference between eggs at the store vs buying them from someone who has chickens.
There was actually an egg shortage a while ago, but lots of people who were raising chickens couldn’t sell their eggs because, and I quote, “they were too rich in flavor and texture, so people didn’t like them”.
It was hilarious and sad that high quality eggs was just something no one ever tasted before, so they couldn’t suddenly get used to the flavor.
It’d be like if you drank skim milk your whole life only to find out regular “whole” milk is actually supposed to be creamy lol
This happened to me. My mother raises hens so when there were big egg shortages, we got some from her. The yolks were so rich that their color was practically orange and they would stain anything they got on. I’ve never had eggs so delicious and flavorful, plus anything I baked with them came out so rich and delicious. They really were almost overpowering and a little disconcerting to get used to. I’m amazed how bad even the best store bought eggs are now.
This was my exact experience as well! One benefit of a relatively small town is a lot of people have free range hens and you can get some really tasty eggs
Find pasture-raised eggs at your grocery store. Added bugs to the diet helps with the rich yolks.
In the country they dine on fresh eggs from the hen-house, fresh tomatoes from the garden, fresh venison and foraged mushrooms. The food they eat is usually better tasting and better quality than the food billionaires eat.
I’m from the country and while your words are nice they’re not factual in the least.
My partner grew up in the mountains, and that’s very much how they ate. Home-grown, canned and cooked basically everything above flour. The kids got taught what they could wild forage themselves, and what to bring back to ask about.
Now, they were so cash poor as to have to rub two pennies together to make three, but that’s a whole different point of conversation
Yeah that’s how my mom grew up 70 years ago in Appalachia, those days are long gone.
The other comment about hotdogs and mac & cheese is much more accurate to the 21st century IME.
Wasn’t that long ago, but damned if they ain’t making it harder to do. Every cheap plot of land I’ve looked at has such stringent use restrictions it’s basically having an invasive landlord with more steps. Homesteading is dead, at least in places i’d consider it.
Not to romanticize it too much. It sucked so bad my partner’s mom responded to a trip idea with “what? Fuck no! We lived in a tent for a year, why the fuck would I want to go camping?”
We still are never allowed to ‘just go live in the woods’ lol
I grew up in the country, while all of that did happen… it wasn’t like every meal was that. Eggs depended on how many eggs the dozen or so chickens laid recently, most chickens don’t lay industrial quantities… tomatoes only in mid/late summer when the garden is fruiting. deer only after deer season, even with my dad and I tagging out each year that isn’t enough deer for every meal to be deer meat (venison lol we don’t call it that). We mushroom hunted (foraging lol) every once in a while but again, wild pecker-heads aren’t prevalent enough for any population to eat regularly
100%. If you break a store egg and a farm egg next to each other, especially in the spring when the chickens start having access to insects again, the farm egg is almost cartoonishly orange next to the store egg.
I had a farmer I got eggs from for years and years. I was so lucky. 50 cents a dozen from 2003-2017. I eat a lot of eggs too. My family goes through two 30 packs a week.
He told me about a month before he stopped. “I done got old, can’t do it anymore. I keep falling and if I break my hip they might as well take me out back and give me a mercy bullet.”
I asked everyone under the sun. No one I found after that was consistent. I thought I found someone a few times, they disappeared after a few months. I gave up and started buying my eggs from the store.
All things must pass. Damn though, that one hurt to lose.
During my quest to find a new source for eggs though, I found someone with duck eggs. I figured, “Ahh, an egg is an egg, right?” Wrong. Duck eggs are not very tasty. They’re fine as an additive to a cake or something, but no way will I ever eat them again. Gah.
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Man oh man, have I? Yessir.
I was about to close on a loan for a small farm. I had space for horses, chickens, cows, whatever I wanted. I was so excited, it was all I could think about. I had the deal of a lifetime on the table. The man who took care of me as a kid and raised me to understand technology, who bought me entire mountains of classic computers from school auctions and was there to guide me into DOS and then Linux, he was the neighbor. He was going to co-sign on the loan for me. All I had to do was move the fence a little bit for him and give him a piece of contested land that I had no interest in.
I took the kids, had them pick out their rooms. We were all very excited. We were dreaming of our lives there. The neighbors on either side were lifelong friends. It was a dream, seriously.
Right before closing on the loan I caught their mom with another man. My whole world turned upside down and I was scared to make a move.
The next three years were complete and total hell, my kids were traumatized. Everything just went downhill.
4 years after our split, she was dead from breast cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, bone cancer.
Life is beautiful, but it can be ugly.
Part of me wonders if she lost it because she had cancer and we didn’t know it. Everything she did was so far from anything I ever dreamed could happen that I can’t help but wonder.
Still though. I’m in the best relationship I’ve ever been in, I have more children now and life goes on, just like it has for anyone who has ever had a hard time.
I’ll get there again eventually. I’m sure I will. If I don’t, I’ll be happy with what I have. No room for chickens. That’s fine with me.
Sorry for the book.
Not quite the same, as we were only together a short time and kids were not involved, but I had a gf who went super loony with “shadow people” and ideas that aliens were after us. She had a serious stroke about a year after we split up and I wonder whether her mental break while we were together was somehow related.
Bro you don’t need a farm to raise chickens. You can do it in a yard if you want. You can also see about buying stock in a farm or in a food share.
Not OP, but I’d absolutely love to, but I don’t want to be the only one caring for them. I can have up to 6 according to city ordinances, which is plenty to keep us fed with as many eggs as we care to eat. However, they do require a non-trivial amount of work and they’re a little stinky, so I’m hesitant to do it, especially since I have three young children and a long-ish commute. But my kids probably old enough to help out (they help w/ our cats), so we’ll see.
I bought some eggs from some neighbors and they were absolutely delicious. I also miss duck eggs, and looking up caring for them, it honestly doesn’t seem worth the hassle. But if someone offered, I’d totally buy a bunch of duck eggs and eat them all the time.
What’s really weird is that eggs are remarkably similar even when raised on entirely different diets or conditions. While farm raised eggs and organic or free range eggs are slightly better, the difference is much more minimal than I think most people think.
I went on a whole deep dive with that topic a while back and the result of that research was pretty much just that eggs themselves are pretty good for you but it matters a lot less which eggs you buy and more than you eat more of them.
All research points to your conclusion, and the downvoters and further comments don’t know shit. The feed affects the color almost entirely with extremely minor differences in everything else.
Bullshit.
Color, consistency, flavor, fragility in the shell, fragility of the yolk, length of time to begin getting weird, length of time to spoil.
Pasture raised hens lay better eggs, hands down.
We’ll bake with sad eggs, but fried or poached? Has to be the good eggs.
I highly recommend learning about chicken husbandry before you make this claim. There are decades of research across numerous countries talking about chicken feed and egg quality. Some farmers know by egg flavor alone if their chickens need supplements and which ones. Chickens can get really weird diseases if they aren’t taken care of properly and this absolutely affects their eggs. I think what you’re noticing is that the eggs you buy as a consumer are about the same for you personally, but that doesn’t mean you can then turn around and claim that “eggs are remarkably similar even when raised on entirely different diets or conditions” and be actually correct.
I don’t understand the point of your comment because I’m not making a claim about animal husbandry necessarily. I think there are plenty of reasons why someone would want non-factory farmed eggs. All I was highlighting was that the difference in actual nutrition is fairly minimal in the studies I looked at and that was surprising to me. Like for how much people talk up farm raised eggs and how different the taste is and everything, I’ve always assumed that raising your own chickens results in drastically different nutritional qualities and I couldn’t find anything backing that up.
It’s still an egg.
And are the nutritional studies you’ve read paying attention to vitamins and micronutrients? Or just calories and fats and protein contents?
I think at the time I was particularly focused on proteins and cholesterol for dieting reasons so I was less concerned with micronutrient content. That being said, the lack of differences between those things in eggs led me to dig a little deeper.
Specifically I wanted to know about eggs eaten in Japan since they take eggs pretty seriously over there and I had watched a mini documentary on it. And if I recall right, what I found was that yes there may be some minor differences in vitamin content or flavor, but they are just minor differences. I guess what surprised me was that I did expect large changes in the health of a caged egg and a carefully managed Japanese egg, but that didn’t turn up in my research. I’m not an expert though, but am scientifically literate.
So to bring it full circle, I know a dietician and I consulted them about it and they did confirm that yes, vitamin content may change though he said the levels of those vitamins and difference between the eggs would be a wash. He said there isn’t any nutritional reason that he knows of to recommend one egg over another.
This is backed up by what the conclusion I came to.The thing I feel most certain about is: In the grocery store, all eggs are the same. And that’s largely true. Now the difference between grocery store and local farm directly is more substantial, but only in cases with high quality food.
I do want to say I’m obviously not an expert, my dietician friend does not specialize in this so that’s the disclaimer, and both he and myself don’t have time to dive deep and if someone wants to present counter research on this, we’d love to be wrong about it.
Do you have sources for your claim that factory farmed eggs are nutritionally the same as cage free eggs?
No, it’s been awhile since I read up on it. But looking at your sources I come to a similar conclusion. There are differences but they’re minor differences.
Agree to disagree they are minor, especially at scale (eating more of them as you suggest).
Wait, would that result in yellower chicken?
Joke aside, healthier chicken?
I don’t know, to be honest. I think they taste better, but I know it could be purely psychological… They’re my chickens, after all. I do think the shells are sturdier (not sure if it’s thickness or composition) when they have more bugs to eat. I don’t know about any claims regarding nutritional differences, but the eggs themselves do have some noticeable and measurable differences.
There’s a market down the street from me. They bring in Amish eggs every week and I always buy them there. The yolks are so bright and the eggs are delicious. Costs maybe 1.5x what regular eggs cost but they’re so worth it
Pretty cool that the price premium is only that! That’s more or less what you pay for regular free-range eggs, isn’t it?
Especially since the price of those shitty grocery store eggs have gone up but my Amish eggs haven’t. I never tried farm eggs till I moved to this area where the market is but I don’t think I can ever go back
I got this from a classic boomer dad of a girlfriend, about chicken meat. He said free range chicken was “more gamy” and he preferred uh…. Chickens raised in tiny cages who can’t move around, apparently. Ok psycho.
It’s what they eat that affects the eggs themselves, and what type of chicken. Plus we treat our eggs which is why they are such a salmonella risk and have to be refrigerated.
From what i understand just a diet more rich in beta carotene will produce a richer looking yolk. Seems like the chicken’s lifestyle would have other effects, too. And yeah, in the US eggs come throughly washed, which removes a layer on the outside that would otherwise keep them fresh at room temp. I think the salmonella thing is more related to the sanitary conditions of the farm - I.e. whether the chickens are infected with salmonella. Farms have cleaned up in that respect over the past couple decades and it’s much less prevalent than it was at one time.
Salmonella is 50x less prevalent in the EU because they vaccinate their chickens against it. The reason they vaccinate is because they do not wash the eggs.
I see. Maybe I was thinking of Europe when I heard salmonella had been reduced so much.
You mean you don’t treat them?
He should see what they do to calves to get veal. 😢
That’s the thing, he had amazing powers of ignorance and apathy. Sure he’d prefer the most abusive methods of making foie gras too.
Just because it came out of someone’s back yard, doesn’t mean it’s high quality. So many chickens get table scraps and little else. Not everyone is suited to keeping pets, let alone livestock.
Nothing like eating eggs that smell of fish because they chickens are fed lots of fish meal in their enclosures. Yuk.
I have experienced this. The yolks are so dang orange. What’s crazy, is we got a to of cicadas awhile ago and the chickens LOVE eating them. The eggs were way to rich for me.
I told my American colleagues that in Denmark we get 3 consecutive weeks off during the summer, and the company is not allowed to contact us. We also get an additional 2 weeks off we can use whenever we want. Oh, and + 5 days (in hours). Again that we can use whenever.
Their jaws dropped.
And I literally can’t leave the office for ten minutes to go buy lunch downstairs. Gotta bring my lunch and eat it at my desk while fielding internal and external questions.
Yeah I’m jealous
I would be too
I get like 3 weeks off per year. Including holidays. Total. And that’s actually considered quite good in my market.
Then I don’t want to tell you about our sick days, and they can be many! Oh, and you cannot get fired if you’re on sick leave, vacation or any other form of leave (parental etc). I feel really lucky living here!
Also we get sick days during holidays
Not how comfortable their life is, how much you buy their industry’s marketing spin about the option for a chicken to stand in a pool of chicken shit, hormones and antibiotics or to be forcibly laying in it for the entirety of its life.
Eh, good thing factory chicken is a thing of the past in The Netherlands, it’s okay vs decent vs good.
Rondeel is decent: https://youtu.be/zwleQLKU-UI?si=kh7T6b_bV0HMXjzO
Label Rouge (France) is good: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aHlCEIAOpEk
Yeah sure it’s €4 to €5 per 10 eggs instead of €2.50 but there’s a big difference in quality. You get watery whites, tasteless yolks and paper thin shells with the cheapest eggs. Same for chickens, the Label Rouge ones are really small at 1.5 kg in comparison to faster growing ones.
Where I’m from, there was a huge egg shortage for a while because ~5 years ago the government passed new laws to try and make things marginally less horrible for chickens. The entire industry decided that they were going to do… basically nothing, then the rules came into force and there was lots of winging from industry people that 5 years want enough time, and how hard it was not being able to sell all this product that they kept producing for some reason
That wasn’t honest incompetence. That was a failed, organized attempt to force a repeal.
Smells like too big to fail fuckery
Smells like too big to fail… cluckery…(⌐■_■)
Oh totally. There was an election and a change of government to one that is typically more business friendly, so I guess the hope was they’d roll back the rules but they were actually pretty popular with the public in general
there was lots of winging
heh
Free range isnt that free
Reminds me of one time I discussed egg ethics and the number system in europe with my fellow german student flatmate.
Our other flatmate was a syrien refugie and when he came in and we translated the subject he laughed - a whole lot. When he was able to speak after that epic laughter he just said “in syria its people in cages and you fight about chicken.”
Reality had been checked
Yeah, it’s good that we think about solving these types of problems, but I think it’s healthy to be reminded that it’s a privilege to be in a position to spend mental energy on it.
Totally. I think it also shows that empathy is to some degree a subject to choice, which in turn is connected to one’s scope of action
Plenty of people in cages in the US - I think we have the highest or one of the highest incarceration rates in the world? So that’s cool but not a situation unique to Syria or something.
It is pretty fuckin creepy that it’s become a standard in all grocery stores that ‘cheap torture’ is an option at all and it’s only because of capitalism flexing that it could the choice to not be evil and we should be grateful for it with more $$
I call them “free-will eggs”. It sounds better in Spanish as opposed to “cage-free eggs”.
Kinda true when you think about it
We buy free-range eggs but battery iPhones…
I just go by price. And sometimes I just really want jumbo eggs.
Sometimes, while having breakfast, you relish in the fact that a chicken struggled to push something jumbo out of its anus.
Chickens have a cloaca, silly.
