Which egg would you choose?


#1

Pretending cost isn’t a factor, which brand of eggs would you choose?
Both are pasture raised.

Brand A - Claims to be very low PUFA, chickens fed beef scraps and beef liver, produce, no fishmeal and that’s all they tell us. Study on their eggs says omega 6 is 2g, omega 3 is 0g. (how can there be no omega 3 at all if pasture raised, I do not understand)

Brand B - Chickens fed peas, wheat, barley, fishmeal, molasses, oats. Omega 6 is 4g, and omega 3 is 350g.


(KM) #2

Well B certainly has an impressive amount of omega 3, lol. Are you sure they aren’t ostriches? :wink:


#3

Brand A is literally impossible AFAIK, The Omega 3’s would naturally be present regardless, even if in lower amounts.

Here’s the problem, people go into nutso land on this stuff and hyper focus on the wrong things. PUFA doens’t equal evil any more than Insulin does. Don’t be afraid of words, look at the big picture.

If one egg has a better nutrient profile, it has the better nutrient profile. I’m going to worry about all the Omega 3’s I’m losing, not the small amount of Omega 6’s I’m getting (don’t forget 6’s are essential too). Easy enough to balance with 3’s.

If Brand A is a local place / farm, I’d question the validity of the test, and if it’s a commercial egg, the common sense of the whole place publically stating that their eggs somehow have no Omega 3’s which I don’t even think is impossible.

Brand B like most is getting fortified feed, and that doesn’t even look terrible vs what a lot of them eat. Especially for winter were all of them are running on feed now.

Eating whole / real foods is great, but when the end result is nutrient problem vs fortifying it and having what we need, I"m going for the one that gives me what I need. Without intentional supplementation, humans are almost guaranteed to be low on a lot of stuff we don’t want to be low in, animals are no different. In this case, I’d go with B.


#4

I used to compare eggs for taste and read what packages say… well, it all varied so much,now I just buy any eggs on hand.

I´m taking a stupid amount of all kinds of supplements at the moment. Makes me feel mentally better now that I´m cutting BP meds and quit statins.


#5

YUP! My supplement stack is scary to most, but as anti-ager / longevity freak and somebody that’s for optimal, and not just good enough, that comes along with the territory!

If you’ve never seen it, the app SuppCo is pretty cool, you put all your supps into it, you can set goals and get recommendations which is good for some, but I like that it’ll total them all up so you get a complete view of everything you’re getting in. Helps for pulling out things that are redundant and seeing shortfalls.

Other good thing is it has a Trust Score rating for almost all the supps where you can compare things like customer satisfaction, and lots of things we may/may not care about like being Organic, NSF certified, GMO, 3rd Party tested, GMP, etc.


#6

I really do not look at eggs that closely, especially with the recent shortages. I will try to buy pasture raised then free range, and so on.I assume that is the better option? Please correct me if I have it wrong. In our house we cannot run out of eggs so I will buy whatever is available if I have no choice.

I do notice color differences, I was always told the more orange the yolk, the more omega 3 but that could be bad advice, I have no idea

Personally, I try to avoid gluten for me (do not always succeed) so the animal being fed wheat would make me hesitate but I am not sure if that is a rational concern on my part


#7

All that egg marketing hype (free,organic,natural,happy…) eventually got me confused.So I buy and eat them all.

K.I.S.S. for me.


#8

I don’t buy the normal supermarket eggs but beyond that it’s not like I have options… I buy some from our “egg lady” (along with a young rabbit or two sometimes), all that she has but it’s not enough even now that we mostly just use eggs when we totally must so I buy some from the greengrocer too. Code 2, it means the hens aren’t kept in tiny cages. That’s it. Meat is even simpler as it’s one kind - or I can go to the farmer’s market for smoked stuff, that’s good. Only chicken has fancy versions but it’s even more expensive than beef, no thanks. I rather buy some deer :slight_smile:

Never cared about the omega thing as it’s not like I can do much about it anyway (of course I don’t use seed oils, I have stopped maybe 15 years ago - but I don’t worry about it when I visit a relative or something). My body seems to be sturdy enough.

So, I buy the more okay eggs, that’s all I can do and I find it enough especially now that I don’t eat 8 eggs a day. I mostly live on pork on my good days. My body seems to be happy with that, I just focus on avoiding plants as much as I comfortably can. My eggs, even if I could buy some super fancy ones, hardly would make a difference I think.


(Brian) #9

It gets crazy. My question was, “tested by who?”

I rarely buy eggs from a grocery store. Amish near me always have an abundance and they grind a lot of their own animal feed from crops they’ve raised. Plus, I see the chickens out running in the pasture sometimes. Probably one of the better places for me to get them. But I know it’s going to depend on exactly where a person is.

I honestly would not put a whole lot of weight into either of the descriptions mentioned. What do you think of the taste of each? Anything about either of them that appeals visually? I think those things would be more important to me. But… that’s just me. Have raised chickens in the past and have contemplated getting some hens again, so I’m pretty familiar with what good eggs taste and look like.

Good luck! Eggs are one of the most perfect foods you can eat!


(B Creighton) #10

IMHO nothing too wrong with fishmeal other than it is probably a highly oxidized product. Standard grain finished beef has about a 7:1 omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, so is not a great source of omega 3s. Nevertheless, is going to have some. To say omega 3 is 0 gr probably means that a “serving” has less than 0.5 gr of omega 3. Nevertheless, that is at least a 4:1 ratio.

My guess is that is supposed to be 3.5 gr of omega 3. 350 gr is over 3/4 pounds of omega 3… nope. So a 4:3 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is quite good. This is in line with what grass fed beef and red meats are going to have… and is about what we are designed to have. So, I go with brand B. The reason it is higher in the omega 3 dept is that it is fed fishmeal. Fish are an excellent source of omega 3s. However, being a PUFA, it is easily oxidized, and I’m sure that is the case with this fishmeal. I try to eat my fish and seafoods as fresh as possible, or packaged to omit air in freezing. Whether the chickens repair any oxidized PUFAs is another question. It is quite possible if they are young birds.
Pasture raised birds are going to have more vitamin K2, which will be in their eggs as a plus.


#11


(KM) #12

So round, so firm, so fully packed. … What on earth did you do to get yolks like that?
:fried_egg::fried_egg:
. :tongue:


#13

Sous Vide.

45 minutes in 68 C bath. Yolks solidify but white is still liquid so you can take the yolks aside and fry the whites separately. :slight_smile:


#14

The other consideration about fishmeal or crab meal is mercury and contaminants which passes into egg yolks and livers of animals. It depends on the fish in the fishmeal though. I noticed a lot of the corn/soy free egg sellers use New Country Organic Corn and Soy free feed. When I researched it, they use farmed catfish for the fishmeal which shouldn’t be too high in mercury, but strangely enough I read farmed catfish are fed corn and soy. The egg brand I listed uses wild caught sardine meal.


(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

As far as taste is concerned, the biggest difference is how long since the egg was laid. For cooking, some processes don’t work with a freshly-laid egg, and I found that older eggs sometimes don’t perform in other situations.

Size mostly has to do with the age of the chicken. If she’s young, her eggs are small; the older ones lay the largest eggs.

If the animal is free-range, the nutrient profile is likely to be better, but soil quality does also have an effect. A poultry farmer just starting out using regenerative methods should be encouraged, even if the nutrient profile of the eggs is less than ideal. As they go along, their eggs will improve, and surprisingly quickly.

The main problem with ⍵-6 fatty acids in the American diet is avoiding getting too much, not getting enough. So any food with an ⍵-3 / ⍵-6 greater than 1 is to be prized (roughly equal is the goal, after all), to make up for all the foods with ratios that favour ⍵-6 fats. Both types of fat are essential to our diet, but the quantity needed is small.


(Brian) #16

Yeah… like hard boiling. It only takes a few weeks of age to dramatically increase the chances of peeling a hard boiled egg without having it look like it’s been through a war. Yup, have tried nearly every trick in the book, too. Fresh are just not as easy.

We like boiling a couple of dozen at a time and eating them as we feel like, usually for breakfast, but anytime we want a little something, as few or as many as we want. Very little effort involved and they don’t last long enough to spoil. Sliced in half, a generous sprinkle of salt, good eats!

We do tend to put a few aside to “age” when we know we’re gonna need 'em. But it’s hard to do when the eggs we get are typically only a few days old, not a few weeks or months. It’s a good problem to have.


(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #17

That’s one thing that struck me about the commercial egg supply chain. We’d gather, wash, and pack the eggs at my uncle’s farm, they’d sit around for a couple of weeks in the basement until the Agway man came and collected them, and then who knew how long it took for them to make their way into the supermarkets?

Taste is another consideration. An egg fried while it’s still warm from the hen tastes nothing like a store-bought egg. I enjoy the taste of all eggs except really old ones, but when I brought my (now ex-) lover around to meet the family, he couldn’t stand the taste of the fresh eggs. He just wasn’t used to it.

I no longer remember what causes it, but some eggs get laid without a shell, just the internal membrane (which is surprisingly tough). We would either throw them through the ventilator fans in the barn to listen to the splat, or take them up to the house for breakfast.

I remember being envious of my uncle back then, because he could hold three large eggs in his hand, while I could only manage two at that age. I also am envious of the scene in the movie where Meryl Streep played Julia Child learning to crack two eggs one-handed, without getting any shell in the bowl. I envy the skill, but it’s not one I plan on mastering! (Although they say that if a piece of shell does get into the bowl, it’s best to fish it out with another piece of shell, and that does seem to work pretty well.)


#18

When I had 200-250 eggs all the time (my egg cupboard was full with them!), I always ate the eggs about 4 weeks after we bought them :slight_smile: They were quite good. Now I often eat fresh eggs (well I don’t know how fresh but soon after we buy them. when it’s from the egg lady and we picked up eggs the previous week, they should be 1 week old at most), they are the same. I don’t remember boiling eggs right after we bought them, I know fresh eggs aren’t good for that… But it’s a mystery how to peel eggs, to me. If the eggs isn’t cooperative, absolutely nothing helps. And other times I can easily peel a boiled egg with a runny yolk, it’s rare and precious!!! :smiley: I love runny yolks and boiled whites.

I can’t crack eggs one handed but I never cared for that skill :slight_smile:
It’s enough for me that I easily whip whites even if some yolk gets into it :slight_smile: