The
Incredible, Marketable Egg
As
I frequently remind you (and myself), I'm old. Old enough to remember
going to the grocery store to buy eggs that just said “EGGS” on
the plain, old-fashioned cardboard carton. No “cage free” or
“hormone free” or “free range” or any of the other clever
qualifiers stamped all over the fancy containers eggs come in
nowadays.
Back
in those days of blissful ignorance we didn't think much about how
eggs got into the cartons. Most of us knew enough about farm life to
draw mental pictures of jovial farmers in overalls going out to the
henhouse and raiding the nests of contented cluckers. We didn't know
– or want to know – about factory farms wherein thousands of hens
existed in battery cages; wire mesh contraptions, stacked and wired
together usually containing more than one chicken squashed side by
side with another in an arrangement that keeps them from being able
to spread their wings or stretch their legs or do much of anything
other than sit there and lay eggs. Each bird “lives” – if you
can call it that – in about seventy square inches of space. I'm
looking at my 9”x8” mousepad. That's seventy-two square inches.
My wireless mouse has more room to roam than a factory farm hen.
Kinda makes you look at your omelet in a different light, doesn't it?
Fortunately,
awareness of these inhumane conditions is slowly forcing changes to
be made in the way eggs are produced. I don't know if we'll ever get
to that bucolic scene I described in the previous paragraph, but
several big egg sellers and big egg users have gotten behind efforts
to moderate or eliminate the cruelty. A number of states have limited
or banned the use of battery cages and legislation is in the works in
other jurisdictions to make things better for the birds that provide
us with such an essential element of our diets.
And,
of course, even as substantive efforts at improvement are being
undertaken at the legal level, here come the hucksters, hawkers,
peddlers, and sloganeers from the ad agencies trotting out to help
thoroughly obfuscate the issue. Ever ones to leap to the forefront of
a cause to see if a dollar might be made there, they have cluttered
supermarket eggs cartons with all kinds of meaningless words and
phrases designed to confuse consumers into feeling better about
themselves and their choices. With that thought in mind, allow me to
blaze a path through the chickenshit in an attempt to offer some
clarity.
Let's
start with “farm
fresh.” If you've
ever seen – or smelled – a commercial chicken farm, “fresh”
is the last thing that comes to mind. It's just a term they use to
sell eggs. If you want real “farm fresh” eggs, you have to go a
real farm. As far as commercial egg freshness goes, check all those
arcane codes on the end of the carton. There's a “pack date,” an
“expiration date,” and a plant code. The plant code simply tells
you in what facility the eggs were actually packaged. It's a
four-digit code that's usually preceded by a “P” and if you're
really curious, the USDA has a plant location tool you can use.
The
“expiration date” is more a guideline for the store than for the
consumer. Also expressed as a “sell by,” “use by,” or “best
by” date, it just tells the grocer when to pull the eggs from the
shelf. You can still safely eat the eggs for at least a couple of
weeks after they “expire.” Same thing with a “sell by/use
by/best by” date; it's an indicator of maximum freshness, not
safety. Both expiration and sell by dates are based on the pack date;
expiration dates have to be thirty days or less from the pack date
and sell by dates have to be within forty-five days. The pack date is
the actual date on which the eggs were put in the carton. It's a
three-digit number that may be a bit confusing because it's based on
Julian dating. Julian dates run from 1 through 365 (366 in a leap
year), so eggs packed on April 1 of a regular year, for instance,
will be Julian coded as 091.
“Natural”
and “All Natural”
are among the ad game's most popular buzzwords. And also among the
most meaningless. They tend to slap the word “natural” on just
about anything. According to the dictionary, “natural” means
“existing in or formed by nature.” If that's not a broad category
I don't know what is. When it comes to eggs, the USDA says egg
products are “natural” if they contain no artificial ingredients,
added color, and are only minimally processed. I've never encountered
an artificially enhanced, color-added, processed egg, so I'm assuming
just about all eggs are “natural.” And if you're scrambling
unnatural eggs, I'm not sure I want to know about it.
“Organic” is the next big word of the day. It's a term that actually does have meaning when it's enforced and not just used as a selling tool. Organic eggs can be a bit healthier for you because the chickens that lay them are healthier. Organic eggs come from free-range chickens that have not been doped up with hormones, antibiotics or other drugs and which have been fed with entirely organic feed. That means the feed given to the chickens can't come from crops that are genetically modified, treated with pesticides or herbicides, or fertilized with chemical or synthetic products. And no poultry-slaughter byproducts. Which leads to another often misunderstood label: “vegetarian-fed.”
People
like to think of happy chickens eating grass and grain and green,
leafy vegetables. That's a nice picture but far from the truth.
Chickens are omnivores: they'll eat anything including other chickens
or parts thereof left over from the slaughtering process. They also
eat bugs and crickets and any fly larvae – aka maggots – they
happen to find hanging around in cow manure. Sorry. Probably better
not to dwell on a chicken's natural diet for too long, but do keep in
mind that a “vegetarian-fed” chicken's favorite between meal
snack is frequently.....chicken.
I
mentioned hormones. That's another specious selling point: “No
Added Hormones.” By
law, laying hens are not allowed to be given hormones anyway, so this
phrase is a selling gimmick. Even the cheap eggs in the cheap
cardboard cartons that just say “EGGS” contain no added hormones.
Same
thing applies to “Antibiotic-Free.”
According to the US Poultry and Egg Association, there are only three
antibiotics approved by the FDA for use in laying flocks and “only
a small percentage of laying flocks producing conventional eggs ever
receive antibiotics due to use of effective vaccines and other
management practices which minimize the need for antibiotics to treat
illness.” And FDA regulations for antibiotic use ensure that
antibiotic residue does not migrate to the eggs. So, it's just
another advertising gimmick.
“Non
GMO” is a
controversial term. In and of themselves, eggs are, of course, not
genetically modified. Nobody's out there trying to engineer a better
chicken or a better egg through genetic manipulation. The “non-GMO”
label is meant to apply to the feed the hens consume, but
unfortunately most gullible consumers just see “Non-GMO” and
think, “Oh, how wonderful! Non-GMO eggs!” And that's what the ad
people want them to think. It sells more eggs.
“Omega-3”
sounds healthy, doesn't it? And most nutritionists will agree it is.
Chickens on a natural diet get an omega-3 boost from sources such as
the aforementioned grasses and weeds. Such hens, therefore, lay eggs
that are higher in omega-3 fatty acids than chickens that are only
grain-fed. Grain-fed birds get their omega-3 charge from fortified
feed. “Omega-3” eggs can be fortified with different types of
omega-3 fatty acids: DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), commonly found in
fish oil, and ALA (alpha linolenic acid), a component in flaxseed,
walnuts, and chia seeds. EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), also found in
fish oil, is another player in the omega-3 game. The problem is
there's no official recommendation for human intake of any of these
substances, and even if you allow for the 1,000 mg daily intake of a
combination of DHA and EPA that some experts promote, the amount of
omega-3 acids added to eggs through a diet of flaxseed and fish oil
are minimal. One
omega-3 egg typically contains 340 milligrams of ALA and seventy-five
to one hundred milligrams of DHA. So you'd have to chow down at least
two-and-a-half eggs every day to get anywhere close to a beneficial
level. But it sounds really healthy and it sells eggs.
“Humanely
Raised” and “Animal Welfare Approved” are terms that help sell
eggs to people who truly are concerned about animal welfare. You'll
see little seals that say either “Certified
Humane”
or “Animal
Welfare Approved”
on the cartons. The former means that the egg producer subscribes to
a set of rules and regulations that guarantee chickens have decent,
healthy living conditions that include proper ventilation and
appropriate nesting material in their nest boxes. They are also given
the opportunity to “bathe,” something chickens do to rid
themselves of lice and other parasites by flopping around in a box of
dirt. The other label certifies that the birds have all these things
plus being raised almost entirely outdoors and that they escape
wholesale slaughter and are painlessly euthanized when their
usefulness as layers expires.
Let's
wrap up this walk through the chicken droppings by examining the real
stars of the egg marketing firmament, “cage-free,”
“free-range,”
and “pastured”
or “pasture
raised.”
According
to the US Poultry and Egg Association, “eggs labeled as cage
free
must be produced by hens housed
in a building, room, or enclosed area that allows for unlimited
access to food and water, and provides the freedom to roam within
the area during the laying cycle.” However, “cage-free” only
means that chickens aren’t kept in actual cages. They might still
live jammed in on top of one another, up to their knees in their own
and their neighbor's waste, and never see daylight within that
“building, room, or enclosed area.” And remember what I said
about chickens being omnivorous? It has been shown in some cases that
without the barriers of cages, “cage-free” chickens living in
close proximity to other chickens have a higher mortality rate due
not only to the easier spread of disease but also because they tend
to peck one another to death.
“Free-range”
is a little better option because, the association says, “free-range”
eggs must be produced by hens housed in a building, room, or area
that allows for unlimited access to food, water, and continuous
access to the outdoors during their laying cycle. The outdoor area
may be fenced and/or covered with netting-like material. The
operative word here is “access.” Just because a chicken has
“access” to the outdoors doesn't necessarily mean it goes
outdoors.
Often chickens are still jammed into cavernous buildings with a small
door on one end that opens to a few feet of outside dirt space. Even
if the chickens on the far end of the building know the door is
there, there's no way they'll ever get to it. And “outdoors”
doesn't automatically mean some picturesque pasture where the
chickens can romp and play in the sunshine. “The outdoor area may
be fenced and/or covered with netting-like material;” in other
words, a screened-in porch of some sort may qualify as “outdoors.”
“Pasture-Raised”
or
“Pastured”
eggs
are kind of the humane gold standard. They are exactly what they
imply; eggs that are gathered from chickens who run around outdoors
eating the things that chickens who run around outdoors eat. The
“girls” at Vital Farms, for example, live on rotated pastures
with an allowance of approximately 108 square feet per bird. Contrast
that the with the seventy or so square inches
allotted to commercially raised chickens in battery cages. Of course,
regular old commercial eggs can sell for less than a dollar a dozen
while pastured eggs go for upwards of six or seven dollars a dozen,
but, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.
Oh,
and one more thing you'll find printed on egg cartons: grades. Grades
are the USDA's “beauty contest” for eggs. The grades “A,”
“AA,” and “B” have nothing to do with the nutritional content
of the egg. While they do help weed out defective eggs with
unpleasant things
like blood spots, meat spots, bloody whites, mixed rot, blood rings,
stuck yolks, embryo chicks, and other nastiness that you wouldn't
want to serve sunny-side up, grades are primarily cosmetic standards.
The highest grade is Grade AA. These eggs have thick, firm whites and
high, round yolks with clean, unbroken shells. Grade A eggs, the ones
usually sold in stores, have most of the same characteristics of
Grade AA, except their whites are "reasonably" firm. Grade
B eggs have whites that may be thinner and yolks that may be wider
and flatter than higher graded eggs and while their shells must still
be unbroken, slight stains are permissible. And, of course, that USDA
grade shield is yet another marketing tool used to sell more eggs.
No
eggs were harmed in the writing of this article – at least not yet.
I feel a frittata coming on and you know what they say about not
having an omelet without breaking a few organic, pasture-raised,
Grade AA eggs.
Thanks for your post Ron. I was digging for information ablut quality of pasta, and why some contains less protein than others...
ReplyDeleteHere we have de Cecco, and Rummo, de rest are pure flour..
About the garlic, If I could eat pasta with garlic with a good dash of good quality olive oil, I would be very happy! Unfortunately there are too many garlic haters out there.....