Was in US last week and did a double-take cutting into a hard-boiled egg in a salad to find a canary-yellow yolk. Have gotten so used to dark orange that it seemed bizarre until I remembered that tweety-colored yolks are typical for factory extruded eggs. What do they feed them to get them that color?
HFCS, industrial grade growth hormone, lots of antibiotics. Pollan had a whole chapter on it. Way "too much" of things that are not good, on industrial farms.
ReplyDeleteI had the opposite experience when first digging into organic eggs here -- I remember that colo[u]r!
ReplyDeleteBonus: My spamcatcher word in Blogger starts with the letters "ovi-"!
But which things specifically impact the color? Darker yolks come from, what, access to green plants? Bugs? Something other than sugar and antibiotics?
ReplyDeleteA homogeneous diet will result in more monochromatic, less nutritious, but less cost effective to produce yolks, embryos, calves, milk, etc etc. Feed it a monoculture in a 1 foot by 1 foot cage, devoid of fiber, exercise, bits of barnyard gravel, bugs, a varied diet, etc, and industrial yolks will be pumped out 10 or 20% cheaper but with 1/2 to 1/10th the nutritional value. Using a holistic approach yields more nutritious outputs.
ReplyDeleteI just finished off a 9 mango flat over the last week, that I got from Costco. California mangoes, 9 for $4.97, picked in April (29th), damn tasty, quite fibrous, yummy, and good-for-you too. Compared to canned or jarred mangoes, even from the awesome Trader Joes, the freshly picked ones are hands down, much better for me and carry a smaller carbon footprint.
And to think I used to eat ice cream, 4 or 5 nights a week?
Now.. if I start producing eggs and dark yolks... that would be concerning. =)
(spamcatcher word "hogeyme" ... or is it.. hog. ey? me? after eating 7 of the 9 mangoes myself over 7 days... lol)
I think you mean *more* cost effective, not less. I need chickens.
ReplyDeleteyou are correct sir. "more cost effective", per egg.
ReplyDelete