The Color of Eggs

Over the years there has been a lot of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion about eggs. As a health pro­fes­sional, I believe eggs are a won­der­ful food and should be part of a healthy, var­ied diet. Let’s talk about eggs for a bit and see why they can help you.

Why eat eggs?

Let’s get down to the real facts about eggs. Eggs pro­vide a com­plete pro­tein includ­ing all the essen­tial amino acids in a bio-available form for your body.  What does it mean to be bio-available?  When you eat eggs your body will absorb a high pro­por­tion of the pro­tein. It assim­i­lates eas­ily into the body.

The high pro­tein con­tent con­tributes to improved weight man­age­ment because it aids in help­ing to stay ener­gized and feel­ing full longer. Because eggs pro­vide com­plete pro­tein with all the essen­tial amino acids, they help to build mus­cle mass and strength also aid­ing in weight management.

Eggs offer sev­eral B vit­a­mins known to sup­port over­all mood enhance­ment such as B12, Riboflavin and Pan­tothenic Acid. The B vit­a­mins are inte­gral to the proper func­tion­ing of the immune sys­tem, brain and cel­lu­lar devel­op­ment within the body.

Free-range hens will pro­duce eggs with a higher level of Omega-3 fatty acids along with other nutrients.

How do you know if your eggs are nutritious?

Like any other food, the means for pro­duc­ing eggs affect the qual­ity of the nutri­ents avail­able from the final prod­uct. With many of the con­ven­tional prac­tices in agri­cul­ture today it is impor­tant that ani­mal prod­ucts in the diet should be derived from organic or free-range when­ever pos­si­ble.  Buy­ing eggs from chick­ens that are allowed to roam in the open and eat from the ground will have a higher nutri­tional value than fac­tory raised chick­ens that don’t see the light of day and are fed a pre­dom­i­nately grain diet.

Brown eggs tend to be of a higher qual­ity than white eggs, in my expe­ri­ence.  I believe farm­ers that choose less widely farmed chick­ens who pro­duce brown eggs are more likely to under­stand the ben­e­fit of rais­ing them in a nutri­ent rich envi­ron­ment. To tell if your eggs are of high qual­ity and nutri­ent value, you should start with the color of eggs.  Here is an exam­ple of the dif­fer­ence in the qual­ity of two eggs.  The one on the left is from a fac­tory farmed chicken egg while the one on the right is from a free-range, local egg deliv­ered to the store within 3 days of being gathered.

As you can see, the free range egg is a brighter orange color while the other egg is pale yel­low.  The dif­fer­ence comes from the avail­abil­ity of fresh air, peck­ing in the dirt and being local ver­sus trav­el­ing hun­dreds of miles to the store.

What about the cholesterol?

Eggs have been reported as being high in cho­les­terol.  Pasture-raised free-range hens allowed to for­age for their own food tend to pro­duce eggs with higher nutri­tional qual­ity in hav­ing less cho­les­terol and fats than fac­tory raised chickens.

Healthy adults who eat eggs in mod­er­a­tion can ben­e­fit from the nutri­ents in eggs.