Hey guys, it's Michael
Kummer here. And in today's video, I wanna talk about the different types of eggs and I
wanna specifically compare pasture-raised eggs to conventional eggs and to some of the other
egg types that you might see when you walk into a grocery store. Now, before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel and you click on the little alert button.
So you get notified when I publish more videos like this.
Now, if you walk into the grocery store and look at the egg aisle, you see a number of different
types of eggs starting from conventional eggs, cage-free eggs, free-range eggs,
omega-three eggs, corn and soy-free eggs, organic eggs, farm-raised eggs, pasture-raised eggs,
and anything in between. So it's fairly confusing to find out what are the best eggs and what are
some of the benefits of going with pasture-raised, a hundred percent pasture-raised eggs versus
free-range or cage-free eggs. Now I initially wrote an article that I published on my blog
and I'm gonna link it down below comparing traditional eggs with pasture-raised eggs. And,
but that was long before we had our own hens. Right now we actually have 14 egg layers in
our backyard, and so we collect fresh a hundred percent pasture-raised eggs every single day.
And so I've gotten a much better understanding of what the differences are between these
types of eggs. What the egg, the color of the egg yolk can tell you about the quality of the eggs
and many other things. I wanted to record this video, so you can pick the best eggs for your
budget and for your nutritional needs. Now let's start with conventional eggs:
caged eggs. Those are arguably the worst type of eggs you can buy because their
animals are treated very badly. They are in small cages. They never see the day of light. They are
standing basically on grids. That's not good for their feed. So all the, you know, the poop and the
droppings can are not stuck on the floor. And all they do is eat and lay eggs. And
at some point, they die or get sick and are replaced. So conventional eggs are something I'd
hardly recommend. They're poor from a nutrition perspective and you don't really wanna support
farmers that raise animals like that. Now, second type of egg are the cage-free eggs.
And what cage-free basically means is that the hens are still crowded, still living a crappy
life, but in a huge building called a henhouse. Now that means there are thousands of hens
in that henhouse. They can barely move. They can, you know, there is no grass.
There is no pasture. There is no daylight. All they have is access to feed and water,
obviously, but that's pretty much it. They live a miserable life.
Yes. It's cage-free. Maybe better than being in a cage isolated all day. But
still a terrible life for the hens. And also from a nutrition perspective, you don't want
to eat those eggs unless absolutely necessary. Then there are organic eggs and organic simply
means that the feed that the hen was fed is organic or was organic. So that doesn't tell
you anything about how the hen was raised, how the animals were raised. So you could still have
cage-free eggs that, you know, came from, hens that were, that lived in crowded henhouses
that just happened to be fed organic feed. Is that better? Probably not for the animals
and probably not for you, either as far as the nutritional value of the egg is concerned,
it's maybe a tiny step up, but you know, something that's less bad isn't necessarily, it
doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Then there are omega-three enriched eggs and all that means is
that the hens were fed, a diet or a feed that had extra sources of omega-three.
It's a little bit more complex than that. But for the purpose of this video, let's call omega-three,
an anti-inflammatory polyunsaturated fatty acid like you would find in many types of fish.
And so by feeding the hens feed that contains higher levels of omega-three.
Then some of that omega-three is gonna end up in the egg and arguably improve the nutritional
profile of the egg. But again, it doesn't say anything about how the hens were raised,
if they had access to pasture or if they were still crowded in either, you know, a cage
or in henhouses. The next one is free-range and free-range is basically is similar to,
to cage-free. It often means that hens had theoretical access to the outdoors, so what that
looks like is a big henhouse where all the hens would be crowded inside, then a tiny door with
a little bit of call it like a patio where hens, could theoretically go to, to have outdoor access
practically speaking, hens won't do that. They stay where the feed is usually,
and they're not gonna try to get through the tiny door with all of the other hens.
So even though they had theoretically outdoor access, they probably never experienced that.
And it's the same as cage-free. You know, living in a crowded enclosure or henhouse. So not
really any better from a practical perspective. And then there are farm-raised eggs, and that's a
very confusing terminology because all hens are raised on a farm. It doesn't matter if it's a,
in a cage, in a henhouse, or in another setting, they're all farm-raised. So it
doesn't really mean anything. You know, it could be farm-raised and still living in a cage.
If the cage is on a farm, it's a farm-raised animal. Doesn't really say anything. And then they
are pasture-raised eggs and pasture-raised could mean a lot of things. Pasture-raised could mean
that the hens had access to pasture, but would predominantly live in a henhouse as a, you know,
similar to free-range. But more often than not means that the hen had at least spent parts of
her life on pasture. And that could mean in a tiny patch of pasture
that could mean in an open pasture where hens could roam to wherever they wanted to.
Or it could mean they lived in a, somewhat of a chicken tractor where they're in a cage
and that cage is on pastures. They, they actually stand on pasture and that chicken tractor gets
moved every couple of days, or maybe every day so they always have access to fresh pasture. The
best type of pasture-raised eggs is obviously those where chickens have plenty of space to
roam on open pasture, where they can forage, where they can eat, whatever they can find.
Be it legumes, be it weeds, be it, you know, grubs and insects and all of the things that
hens naturally eat, because guess what? Hens are insectivores. That's their natural diet.
So if you read on a carton of eggs, vegetarian fed hens then that basically means that hens
were fed a diet that's not appropriate to them because hens are not vegetarian. They're not
vegan. They're insectivores. They eat insects predominantly. Yes. Most hens in our environment
have to be, have to get supplemental feed. We do that as well because they likely won't
find enough to produce the number of eggs that you would like to get out of them.
It's as simple as that. So in terms of pasture-raised, it's important that you
look for pasture-raised eggs, where the hens that actually space a lot of space. There are some
brands that we used to buy in the past, and I think they give each hen 106 square feet
per hen or so, so a lot of space to forage and run around and find food, and then it would get
supplemental feed. And that's another
area that's potentially important to understand. Even if it's a pasture-raised egg, what was the
supplemental feed that the hens got in our case, we feed corn and soy-free feed. And when I say
we. I'm not selling eggs. I'm not saying this because I want to try to sell you something.
We only, have eggs for our own consumption. We don't sell them. We sometimes give them away
if we have too many, but we don't sell them. So keep that in mind. But we feed them a corn
and soy-free diet. And that's important because corn and soy is high in omega six.
That's the inflammatory cousin of omega-three. If you wanna, you know, simplify it, it's a little
bit more complex and nuanced than that. But for the sake of this video, omega-six is
inflammatory. omega-three is anti-inflammatory. And so by removing corn and soy from the diet,
you reduce the omega-six content and that leads to a better omega-three
ratio or nutritional profile in the egg. And so that's the best type of egg you can get. So how
are pasture-raised eggs better from a nutritional perspective compared to conventional eggs?
Well, first of all, they have twice as much vitamin E
as conventional eggs. They have almost 40% more vitamin A than conventional eggs. They have
usually a better omega-three to omega-six profile or ratio, despite, you know, the omega-three
enriched eggs. There are still pasture-raised eggs, still, beat any of the conventional
eggs that you can find on the market. And so those are some of the factors that
make pasture-raised truly pasture-raised eggs better than conventional eggs, but. It's not
only the quality of the egg because that directly influences our own health. I'm also concerned
about the health of the animals. You know, I wanna make sure animals are treated and raised
in a manner that's appropriate to the species. And so in our case, our hens roam the backyard.
They can forage whatever they want to. They get supplemental feed that has the
lowest amount of omega-six possible. And they, you know, lay great eggs every morning that
feed us that provide the nutrients that we need to thrive as well. And so I just want to do the same
thing for our hens and feed them appropriately. Now, there are some misconceptions with looking
at the color of the egg yolk to tell you whether or not this is a nutritional egg. Now
the color of the yolk is predominantly determined by the pigments
in the feed that the hen ate. So a darker color means more plant pigments and more, just more
pigments in general that were part of the feed. Now, if you compare a conventionally raised hen
with a pasture-raised hen, you can usually see a clear difference between a fairly pale yolk
that didn't have a lot of pigments in the feed. That typically means a purely grain-fed,
vegetarian-fed hen with poor feed. That didn't have a lot of pigments and the pasture-raised
hen usually has a very dark orange yolk. That's an indication of, you know,
all the forage, all of the different plants and bugs and grubs the animal ate.
However, there are some companies that put color pigments into their feed. A conventionally raised
egg also looks darker in color and tries to trick you into thinking this is a nutritious egg,
just because the color of the yolk is dark. Doesn't always mean it's a nutritional egg.
That's something very important to keep in mind. But more if it's a pale yolk, you can usually tell
that the feed was crappy and the nutritional value of the egg is crappy as well. However,
I should also mention that in winter, when there is less forage for our hens, the yolk
is a little bit paler than in summer, and that's just, again, a reflection of what our hens
could find by foraging and by eating on pasture. Now, the other aspect that might influence
quality, nutritional quality, I haven't seen any studies on that unfortunately is the water supply.
So we have a plastic-free watering system that we used to feed our, or to give our,
provide our hens with fresh drinking water and it's plastic-free because all plastics can leach
endocrine-disrupting chemicals. I have a whole blog post about that
into the water and especially at higher temperature. So in summer, if you have
like a plastic bucket or plastic barrel to feed your animals, that is likely loaded endocrine
hormone-disrupting chemicals. And first I thought, well, if chickens don't have any estrogen
receptors, that might not be a problem, but they do have those receptors as well, much like humans
do and many other many other animals do as well. So if we mess with their hormones that could
potentially impact the quality of the eggs they're produced. It obviously impacts the
quality of the hen's health, but could also impact the quality of the egg. And so we do
it completely plastic-free to prevent any of those hormones from getting into our hens.
And then from there getting potentially into the eggs, if that's really happening or not.
I dunno because I haven't seen any scientific research, but I'd rather be on the safe side. So
that's another factor that you might consider. And unfortunately, I would argue that most commercial
farmers use plastic throughout their operations, simply because it's more
convenient, cheap, or easier to clean. What have you. But that's something to keep in
mind as well. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up. So I hope that video was useful. I hope now,
you know, the difference between those different types of eggs. Again, look at
my blog post for more information. If you wanna recap that, maybe print it out, but if you can,
if you can afford it, if the budget allows go for a hundred percent pasture-raised eggs,
ideally corn and soy free. Best case scenario and avoid traditional eggs
cage-free free-range, and you know, all of those other types of eggs that simply mean the hens lift
a horrible life and produce eggs that are not as nutritional as the pasture-raised ones. Now with
that. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoy this video. If you liked it, give it a thumbs up.
If you didn't like it, let me know any comments what I could've done better. Until next time.