Still, lutein is too expensive to produce synthetically, and is usually extracted from marigold flowers. The preferred carotenoid for reddish orange shades is canthaxanthin, so a typical egg laid in Finland might include just 0. While an egg laid in Germany, where dark orange yolks are popular, could have up to 0. But what if the hens are producing organic eggs? They can only receive natural sources of carotenoids. So rather than receiving feed with synthetic canthaxanthin, an organic egg-laying hen might be fed tomato powder instead, which would provide the red pigment lycopene, or paprika, which contains the red xanthophyll capsanthin.
Without scientific testing, you cannot know what carotenoids are in your egg, or how much. Lutein may protect against macular degeneration — a permanent loss of sight caused by declining retinal cells.
That may sound impressive, but there could be better sources of carotenoids. Another study found kale could contain almost 13 times more lutein than egg yolk, per gram. A sunset-orange egg yolk might suggest its chicken was able to dine outside on plants. But perhaps the chicken just ate feed enriched with chili powder. In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it.
Order a copy for your coffee table and settle in to rediscover the origins of your food. However, color is the spice of life, so be adventurous and diverse with your egg choices!
Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Notice: It seems you have Javascript disabled in your Browser. In order to submit a comment to this post, please write this code along with your comment: dfdfdaf0feb5bbd. While normally I love anything from Back to the Roots, I found this article very poorly written and misleading.
Epub Aug 3. Thank you. This article leads to the misconception that hens only eat vegetables. A dark orange yolk is highly dependent on the amount of protein they eat.
Chickens are actually omnivores and a healthy chicken diet will consist of lots of insects and bugs. The more insects they eat, the darker orange the yolk.
Source: My backyard where my hens roam free and are not fed any commercially prepared feed. Their plant material intake varies by the season. Their insect intake is every season except winter. In winter, their yolks are not orange, even if they have a high dark leafy green intake. The more protein they eat, the darker the yolk.
Thank you so much for sharing your feedback and experience. Actually, yolk color depends almost entirely on pigments in the food chickens eat. If a hen eats plenty of yellow-orange pigments called xanthophylls , those pigments will make a darker orange egg yolk. When hens eat feed containing yellow corn or alfalfa meal, they lay eggs with medium-yellow yolks.
When they eat wheat or barley, they lay eggs with lighter-colored yolks. A colorless diet, such as white cornmeal, produces nearly white egg yolks. Imagine the surprise when you crack that egg! We use a yolk color fan to determine whether the yolk is as dark as Organic Valley consumers expect it to be. For certified organic eggs, like ours, these supplements have to be organic-approved and usually come from nature, such as marigold petals.
Yolk pigments are relatively stable and are not lost or changed in cooking. Eggs produced on our Organic Valley farms will typically have a consistent yolk color year-round since our hens get the bulk of their nutrition from their regular feed ration.
But you may see slightly darker yolks in the warm months when the birds are spending more time outdoors eating seeds, grasses and bugs in addition to their regular feed.
0コメント