The Color Of The Yolk Can Tell You If The Egg Came From A Healthy Chicken
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Eggs are a staple in several households due to their versatility. You can have them for breakfast by whipping up a simple omelet or make some egg curry or anda bhurji for dinner. Plus, they come with several health benefits to boot, which makes them a wholesome food packed in a small white shell (1).
But are the eggs you’re having really healthy?
You might be surprised to know this but not eating a rotten egg is not really equivalent to having a healthy egg. To truly get all the health benefits that the humble egg has to offer, you’ll have to look beyond the cracks, chips, and spots on the shell.
The Yolk Test – The Simplest Way To Know If Your Egg Is A Good Egg
You know that different varieties of eggs exist in the market, right? There’s the farmer’s eggs, local market eggs, and the supermarket eggs. You’ll have to buy each of these varieties to find out which one of them is the healthiest, and consequently the most nutritious one.
Once you have gotten all three of them, break each of them one by one in separate bowls. Do you see a difference in the color of the yolks of each of them?
Chances are these would be your results:
- Color of yolk of local market egg: Yellow
- Color of yolk of supermarket egg: Yellow
- Color of yolk of farmer’s egg: Orange
Can you guess which one of them is packed in nutrients and, hence, the healthiest choice?
It’s the one with the orange yolk!
So Why Is The Orange Yolk The Best?
To put it simply, a dark orange yolk indicates that the chicken that it came from is healthy. Okay, that sounds crude. Scientifically speaking, an orange yolk-ed egg (if that’s a term), is produced by pasture-raised hens. Pasture-raised hens are generally raised on a healthy and balanced diet with lots of exposure to sunlight and the natural environment, which makes them healthier and leads them to produce the healthiest eggs.
A pasture-raised hen typically gets plenty of access to the outdoors and good quality foods such as grass, clover, insects, worms, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, etc. – all of which constitute an ideal diet and living environment for a chicken (2).
Besides, a study carried out by the Pennsylvania State University has shown that the nutritional content of pastured eggs, i.e., those eggs with orange yolks is higher (3), (4). In pastured eggs, you get higher levels of the good fatty acids, and vitamins A and E; especially when you compare it to eggs that come from caged hens in factories.
What If The Yolk Is Light Orange?
Yes, it’s quite possible that you end up getting a yolk that is neither yellow, nor properly orange, but somewhere in the middle – like a shade of pale orange. Now you may question – is that healthy? The good news is that it is healthier than a yellow yolk.
Although a light orange yolk probably means that the hen(s) concerned never got much access to a natural environment, the egg quality is still higher than those eggs that come from factory-bred hens.
The organic eggs you get in the market may come from such chicken, who are raised in a sort of a cage but are given access to a small restricted area to graze upon. However, this might be devoid of grass, or even insects to feed upon. Hence, the light orange color.
In fact, this light orange color can also be attributed to one more cause – that of feeding corn to the chicken. The corn in their diet can darken their yolk to a certain extent, thus making it appear a shade darker than yellow. However, you should know that the diets of such hens are completely lacking in insects and other such foods and that they’re raised on a vegetarian diet only, consisting mainly of grains. This can lead to lower nutritional content in the eggs produced.
Is Yellow Yolk Really That Bad?
Well, yes. This is because eggs with yellow colored yolks come from chickens who were raised far from a natural environment, never seeing grass or having insects, and were only and exclusively fed a vegetarian diet (5). These eggs come from commercial egg factories, so you can expect them to be of low quality since they’re mass produced for profits. These are the eggs you should avoid. Their nutritional value is way lower than eggs with orange yolks, which means they’re not healthy.
So, when you go egg shopping next, make sure you buy your eggs straight from the farmer. Even if they come at a little bit more price than those sold in the supermarkets that come with hefty discounts, the price you pay will be worth it for what you get – a good egg.
