Thursday, October 15, 2009

More on Grass fed eggs

http://www.grass-fed-eggs.com/

More Information About Grass-Fed Eggs
Are grass-fed eggs really more nutritious?

Yes. This has been known forever. It's mentioned in books on poultrykeeping from the Forties (see Jull's "Successful Poultry Management," 1943), and gets verified from time to time even now.

Mother Earth News did an article, Meet Real Free-Range Eggs a couple of years ago that tested a number of grass-fed eggs (including mine), and demonstrated that, compared to ordinary supermarket eggs, they had:

* 1/3 less cholesterol
* 1/4 less saturated fat
* 2/3 more vitamin A
* 2 times as much Omega-3 fatty acid
* 7 times as much beta carotene

The thing I find amusing about grass-fed eggs is that they have high levels of the fad nutrient du jour, and always did, even before the nutrient became fashionable. Confinement operators spend millions of dollars trying to chase after fad nutrients, while grass-fed eggs always seem to be there already.

Grass-fed hens eat their greens, while confinement hens eat nothing fresh at all. It makes a big difference.

The ultimate test of nutrition. The ultimate test of an egg is whether it can hatch into a healthy chick. For decades, breeder hens (whose eggs are are put into incubators for hatching) were kept on grassy range, since eggs from confinement hens didn't hatch very well. It's hard to make a clearer case for the nutritional value of grass than that.

These days, poultry nutrition is very well understood, and breeder hens lay eggs with excellent hatchability without being grass-fed. But this is true only if they are fed a special breeder ration. Hens laying table eggs are fed a cheaper ration that's comparatively deficient, meaning that the eggs in the supermarket are much less nutritious than they could be.

Could confinement eggs be as nutritious as grass-fed eggs? Certainly. Do enough people care enough to support a high-nutrition confinement egg industry? Beats me. It's not a branch of the biz that appeals to me.
Grass-Fed Eggs and Flavor
Do grass-fed eggs really taste better?

Try 'em and see. Some people, like me.