Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Wegmans egg yolk are beautiful vibrant yellow.
Costco egg yolk are light yellow.
Wegmans organic eggs are rated A , but the yolk looks better.
Costco organic eggs are rated AA, and Is better rating.
Both are from vegetarian fed hens.
My question is why the yolk color difference.
Small free-range/pastured poultry/egg producer here.
The yolk color reflects what the hen is eating. A brighter yellow or orange yolk means the hen is eating/kept on grass. Light yellow indicates they are probably confinement kept and fed only layer feed/organic layer feed. The whites will also be clearer in a pastured egg, and the texture/taste will be a lot stronger, more rich. Also - chickens are omnivores, they should
not be eating a vegetarian only diet (huge pet peeve of mine), they need bugs, grass, and weeds in their diet, in addition to a calcium supplement for strong egg shells (mine have access to free choice crushed oyster shells). Tons of research out there on nutritional differences between the eggs too, pastured will have more Omega 3s and beta carotene content.
The rating doesn't matter - all commercially produced eggs you buy in a grocery store are from chickens kept in pretty awful conditions, no matter if they are "organic" or not. "Cage free" means the hen has at least 2 feet of space to move around, "pastured" can mean they have access to outside areas, not that they can necessarily get there through the thousands of other hens in the barn. "Organic" means they were fed and kept in a facility that meets USDA Organic regs - the grower has to certify and provide records that the facility hasn't had exposure to non-organics in the past 3 years, and the animals are fed organic feed. That's it. If the bird isn't healthy, it is usually culled (or left to suffer and die) instead of treated with medication that can solve the problem because if the animal is administered medicine it immediately loses it's "organic-ness." Organic does not mean a healthy animal or ethical or humane. At all. Shell color is irrelevant, different breeds of chickens lay different colors of eggs. White layers usually lay more eggs because they don't have to lay a pigment on the shell during the egg's trip through the bird.
The big producers have found all sorts of ways around the regulatory standards for labels. The only way to guarantee good eggs or meat, raised in a humane and ethical way, is to find a local farmer, visit their farm, and get on their list, and most of us are having trouble keeping up with demand these days.