What the heck is the difference between what I thought was regular eggs (caged) and Free-range eggs? A friend of mine recently told me that she couldn't find any free-range eggs at the grocery store where I live and thats all that she was used to eating in Australia!! It made me think...do we have free range eggs here? What do they look like? Whats the difference?
I love learning new things, so I decided to investigate, buy the eggs, compare the two and research a little!!! This is not meant to be a research article, its my blog. Just Jen. So lets just enjoy this quick easy read shall we and if you want more specific research and information please choose better sources!! lol I'm not claiming to know everything about eggs, farmers or chickens. Okay, now that thats out of the way....
What i've gathered from reading is this, chickens can have a pretty cruel life. Now, you can look at it whichever way you want, animal cruelty, their purpose, what man expects of them, etc. Reading about the process of ANY food from animal to me is always saddening. Am I ignorant to the fact that the process of getting caged eggs is an unpleasant one for the chickens? Absolutely. While reading I discovered that many are caged in a super small area big enough for the female chickens to pretty much stand and not even stand properly, sometimes leading to deformities, the purpose is so they do not sit down. They're often in a downward grade cage and their beaks can be burned so that they are not able to pick at the caging and disrupt the process of farming. They're often fed antibiotics and pesticides. The males, who are often useless after are killed. Again, I'm not saying I agree with this process, nor am I saying this is how every farm does this etc. Just what I've read along in my research.
Free-range are when the chicken are able to roam the grounds and eat insects and plants etc. Hence the name "free-range". They are not fed pesticides and antibiotics with no herbicides, or preservatives in their feed. Immediately you should be thinking, awesome!!! I guess this means that it doesn't get transferred to the eggs they lay!! You're right!! Often with caged hens they pass on the bad stuff to the eggs we ingest. YUM> NOT. Whereas the free-range are producing a much more healthy egg for us humans to ingest.
I LOVE EGGS!! I eat them just about every single day!! I purchased two cartons of eggs at the grocery store the other day:
The top carton is the eggs my husband and I normally would buy, Large Size Brown Eggs. This normally costs around $4.50 depending on which grocery store we shop at and if there are any sales etc. We go though two cartons a week approximately.
The bottom carton is the Organic, Large Size from Free Range Hens, claiming to have no pesticides, herbicides or preservatives in the feed for the hens which produce these eggs. These cost me $5.99.
This morning I decided to cook one of each egg and compare the difference in taste and appearance. I prepared them the same way, from refrigerator, into my rock frying pan with a light spray of olive oil.
Here's how they appeared in the pan after approx. 20 seconds of contact....
The lighting was from the over-range light but you can see the color of the yolk of the free-range egg is slightly darker and the white is more intact and less patchy. But who cares right??? Why bother buying eggs because they look a little different, well obviously you're intelligent enough to know that that is not the only difference in the two.
Upon tasting the two once cooked over soft, the yolk of the caged egg was watery and did have a different taste of yolk compared to the free range. This is usually do to caged chickens being fed the waste products of the grain industry.
The FR was velvety and the egg white was tasty, it's unusual and difficult to explain exactly. Don't get me wrong both were delicious! I LOVE EGGS like I said, but the FR was DEFINITELY more tasty than the caged when compared side by side.
So what else?? Still not convinced its worth $1.50 more? What about the health benefits???
On average, free-range eggs have:
- Twice as much omega-3 fatty acids.
- Three times more vitamin E.
- Seven times more pro-vitamin A beta-carotene.
- A quarter less saturated fat.
- A third less cholesterol.
Quite impressive right?? I thought so. Some other tests have shown that these FR eggs can have up to 6x more Vitamin D!!! And where I live, I'll take all the Vitamin D I can get!!! We rarely see the sunshine haha!
All in all, I'm converted!! Is it worth the $1.50 (The cost of one coffee) to ingest a better food that i'm eating daily?? Absolutely, to me without question it is.
xo
Jen
