What a chicken eats will determine the nutritional value of the egg. The health benefits of free-range or pasture raised chickens and their eggs are many. Although, it is best to find pasture fed chickens because it means that the chicken is allow to roam freely, while free-range chickens can have various meaning. If you can only find eggs from free-range chickens, it’s better than eggs with no label or a label that indicates that the chickens were grain fed.
Free-range chickens, or pasture raised chickens, are free to roam around the farm. They eat a natural mixed diet of grains, grass, plants and insects. Cage chickens are kept in artificial conditions, confined to cages with many other chickens, with no access to outside pastures.
Test results show that eggs from chickens raised on pasture contain four-to-six times as much vitamin D as typical cage raised hens. In addition, eggs from pasture raised chickens contains one third less cholesterol, one fourth less saturated fat, two thirds more vitamin A, two times more omega-3 fatty acids, three times more vitamin E and seven times more beta carotene as cage raised chickens.
You can tell by the texture of the shell of the egg and the color of the yoke if chickens are grain fed or free range. Free range chickens consume grass that contains carotenoids. Those carotenoids produce a yoke that is bright orange in color. Grain fed chickens will produce yokes that are a pale yellow in color. Although some producers, trying to mislead the consumers, will use color in the feed to enhance the color of the yoke of grain fed chickens.
You can also tell by the shell of the egg if the chicken that produced the eggs were free range or pasture raised chickens versus grain fed chickens. The shell of an egg from a free range or pasture raised chicken tends to be harder to crack than the shell of an egg from grain fed chickens.
So next time you select eggs at the grocery store, you need to pick the eggs from free range or pasture raised chickens. You should avoid the carton of eggs that has no label on it indicating how the chickens were fed because it’s likely those eggs came from chickens that were grain fed.
