Question:
What should I be aware of as being the healthiest choice, if I use eggs for my family?
The Seer:
Firstly, be aware that eggs feed viruses and that the unwholesome mass-produced eggs in large grocery stores, often have some salmonella (it causes a bacterial infection that affects the intestinal tract).
Secondly, never buy the unwholesome choice of “cage-free” eggs, but instead, buy “free range” eggs.
Many eggs are advertised as “antibiotic-free”, which again assumes that consumers are unaware. In the USA it is not permissible to feed chickens antibiotics so all eggs are automatically “antibiotic-free”.
Question:
What is the downside of buying “cage-free”?
The Seer:
On the large chicken-raising farms each chicken has its own little cage and their waste products are removed by a conveyer belt. It’s at least hygienic. But if the stores want to attract the uninformed shoppers, then they demand “cage-free” chickens. The farmers then remove the conveyer belts and cages, and the chickens live in their own filth. Just as is the cage of farmed fish, they eat each others’ waste products which is seldom cleaned.
Question:
Does the eggshell color make a nutritional difference?
The Seer:
No, but what is really helpful to make sure your eggs are salmonella free, is to know where your eggs come from. If adequate laying spaces aren’t available, chickens lay eggs wherever it’s hidden from predators. Which means that if the chicken owner isn’t diligent about finding and collecting the eggs several times daily, they could be lying in the sun for even days.
Some little-known facts about the freshness of eggs (from Google):
• If you normally buy your eggs from the store, then you should know that those fresh eggs can actually be up to two months old. Whereas if you have your own flock then you already know you have the freshest eggs around!
• If you are buying store eggs then you can expect them to stay fresh for around a month.
In the US, fresh eggs should be kept refrigerated once bought.
• The need for refrigeration in the US is because they have been washed and no longer have the natural protective bloom on them.
If you keep your own chickens and do not wash the eggs, then you can store them on the counter. A cool, dry, dark storage place, will do a great job of keeping those eggs fresh.
• Remember that store-bought fresh eggs can be up to eight weeks old before you buy them. So in total they will last for around three months (refrigerated), but two of those months can be spent on the shelf at the store!
🙂
Ever driveby a commercial chicken farm or see a hen truck–they both smell of putrid death…. and they power wash the trucks down with bleach about 3 times to cclean them.. that alone should tell you theres something wrong with large egg production..maybe you could clear the trauma and restore the purity of the hens and the eggs that your eating… and the nutrients everytime you eat?
Ever driveby a commercial chicken farm or see a hen truck–they both smell of putrid death…. and they power wash the trucks down with bleach about 3 times to cclean them.. that alone should tell you theres something wrong with large egg production..maybe you could clear the trauma and restore the purity of the hens and the eggs that your eating… and the nutrients everytime you eat?
Every now and then over the decades we buy a few eggs from one of the local family farms. When they have a few extra. And indeed twice in three years we had an unfresh egg. Probably, as Almine suggests, collected under a bush by overdiligent children 🙃
SO, for you of a generation who attended modern non-sexist schools lol, here’s what we girls learned in junior high ‘home economics’ class: have a saucer next to your mixing bowl or frying pan; deftly break the shell and pour it out onto the saucer. There should be 3 levels to a fresh egg: a plump yolk, surrounded by the clear white which has a hight of ¼-½ inch (+-1 cm), then a flat runnier part of the egg white. In store bought eggs the white will be all flat but some will still have a rounded yolk. If the yolk too is flat… c’est pas bien bon! At that point it may not have started to stink yet but if soft-boiled or hard-boiled the taste will be not at all like a reasonably fresh egg from a garden hen whose out slowing traffic on country roads.
Bon happytite!
Love you so BK! xo
Love you too dear Anna 💚 She who breathes in the poetry of life’s whimsy.
🐥🐣🐥
🤗
I was asked a couple of days ago, ‘why don’t you eat eggs?’ and there are so many reasons to me… this cage-free is similar to ‘barn laid’ I believe. They are all crammed into a shed, walking in their own filth, and getting trampled in some cases. The cage eggs are downright unethical of course, but my main reason for not eating them is that when chickens are left to their own natural rhythms without us taking the eggs away, they stop laying so much. The egg is essentially their period, so imagine having to go through a period daily instead of every week or so. Not to mention eggs are full of cholesterol (which is absent in plant-based food), and to me, they smell dreadful when cooked. To my understanding, it is completely un natural in our digestive tract to take eggs, unless we are in desperate times.