The Only Kind of Egg You Should Eat
Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,
Every time I cruise my natural food store, I’m struck by an odd pair of words printed on some of the egg cartons.
The birds that laid these eggs, the copy proclaims, were “vegetarian fed.”
Pardonne-moi?
If you know your way around chickens — and as a kid in Oregon, I wrangled a couple of flocks — you’ll immediately grasp that this is an unlikely “virtue” to promote.
A vegetarian chicken is roughly akin to a vegetarian dog. Bowser won’t expire, at least not right away, on a diet of corn. But don’t expect him to thrive, either.
Like dogs, chickens are protein-preferring omnivores. Put a pile of bugs and worms in one dish and a mess of corn in another and watch the chickens vacuum up the little critters without even glancing at the corn.
They’ll even eat mice and snakes and rip into a large animal’s carcass just like their close kin the buzzards.
Chickens are healthier — and their eggs are far more tasty and nutritious, with glorious deep-orange yolks — if you permit them to follow this natural inclination by scratching and pecking for protein (and nutrient-dense wild weeds) in open pastures.
With this in mind, back in the aisle, I scanned the word salad of categories for eggs, including “cage free,” “free range,” and “pastured.”
The only one of these terms that the USDA defines is “free range,” and its definition is ludicrously broad: “Producers must demonstrate to the agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.”
In other words, tack a tiny, concrete outdoor porch onto an otherwise crowded, dark, claustrophobic, and overheated industrial barn et voila — “free range” chickens and eggs. The term is meaningless.
So what about “pastured”?
It’s not an official USDA designation and likely never will be — the USDA doesn’t want to aggravate commercial growers by creating official categories of superior products.
But the folks at PasturedPoultry.org, which promotes pasture-raising of fowl, say the official definition should be: “Birds are kept outside (as the season and daylight hours permit), utilizing a movable or stationary house for shelter, and they have constant access to fresh-growing, palatable vegetation.”
Growers who claim their chickens are “pastured” tend to include photos, text, and other information inside the carton letting you know how the chickens are actually raised.
Assuming the info can be trusted, it looks like what’s billed as “pastured” at my store conforms to Pastured Poultry’s definition.
It’s vital to get your eggs from a true “pastured” source that conforms to this definition, for two reasons:
- Industrial chicken and egg operations are unspeakably cruel. Chickens are either packed into “battery cages” so tightly that they can scarcely move or they’re jammed into pens by the thousands in which they each have no more than one or two square feet to graze. Eggs are a vital part of my diet — I eat at least two daily — but I’d rather forego eggs altogether than support these practices.
- Nutritionally, true pastured eggs are vastly superior.
In 2007, Mother Earth News commissioned an independent lab to test eggs from 14 pastured flocks and compared the results with nutrition data from the USDA on eggs from commercial flocks. The results were dramatic:
This huge uptick in micronutrients and healthy fat in pastured eggs makes them not only healthier, but far tastier.
Bottom line: Do what you need to do to get pastured eggs. Pay the premium price at your local health food store. Stock up at a farmer’s market. Get some as part of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program.
Or if you can, start your own backyard coop. If you grant the girls wide latitude to find the nutritious foods they crave, they’ll provide you with the same benefit.
Best,
Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions
