Healthy Living Makes a Difference

An egg is an egg, right? Wrong! Eggs are getting smarter it seems, and consumers now have choices to make when they buy eggs and I’m not talking about small, medium or large.

The choice is between the classic egg that has been the mainstay in supermarkets for decades, and organic eggs which are now available along side at higher prices. Within the organic egg category, there are further choices, one being between “original” and omega-3 enriched.

Two factors one considers when purchasing almost any food are cost and nutrition. We know the price of organic eggs is higher than for regular eggs, but the important question is, are they worth the extra cost when we consider nutrient content?

It must be said at the outset that eggs are a wholesome food any way you look at it. They contain high-quality protein – absorbed more readily by the body than protein from meats, and provide a whole range of nutrients including vitamins A and D and several B vitamins.

Cholesterol content

Eggs of all stripes have received a bad rap because of cholesterol content, but what reports often fail to clarify is that saturated fat is much more prone to raise serum cholesterol levels than cholesterol contained in food. Thus consumers would do well to cut back on red meat, for example, instead of eliminating eggs from the diet.

Thus all things considering, Canada’s Food Guide specifies that a serving of two eggs can take the place of meat several times a week, and since they are a nutrient-dense food, they are a wise choice.

Would we be doing ourselves a further favour, then, in choosing organic eggs instead of the classic ones?

The term “organic” specifies that a food product has been raised or grown without chemicals. In the case of organic eggs, it would indicate no chemically-based herbicides or pesticides were used for control and no animal by-products or antibiotics were contained in feed given to the hens. Eggs designated as “organic” on the market are verified as such by International Certification Services.

In farms producing organic eggs, hens are either free-run, which means they can move freely inside poultry barns, being fed a controlled diet of mixed organic feed, or free-range, which indicates they are able to roam around outside and allowed to eat vegetation usually supplemented by mixed feed.

Ample space to move

In both cases, the hens live in a “friendly” environment where they have ample space to move about, scratch in the dust and lay their eggs in private nesting areas of their choice (to a point). This sounds exactly like the flock of laying hens most farms used to keep on the prairies. The hens I remember on our farm were happy strutting around wherever they wanted—and also laying their eggs wherever they wanted, although we tried to train them to seek out the coop. I guess we had organic eggs, although that label was never used.

The colour of the yolks of those long-ago eggs were a deep yellow—in marked contrast to the pale yolks we encounter in commercial eggs nowadays. Indeed, the yolks of organic eggs are usually “yellower” due to the feed, often a mix of corn, flaxseed and soybean, but it also indicates a higher vitamin A content than regular eggs which is one of the main differences. Nutritional studies show organic eggs are also slightly higher in vitamin E, folate and riboflavin, all important nutrients. In other ways, the two types of eggs are similar. The “omega-3 eggs” are organic eggs containing significantly more heart-healthy omega-3 than classic eggs (two organic eggs provide 90 mg of omega-3 which is half of the recommended daily intake). These specialized eggs – laid by hens fed a diet of concentrated omega-3 content – also contain an increased amount of vitamin E.

Eggs are a healthy main dish for breakfast or lunch in any number of forms, and a key ingredient in dozens of baked products. Organic eggs do have an edge when it comes to nutrition, but are also more expensive. For some consumers the fact that fowl is allowed to roam in a “natural” environment in the production of organic eggs, alone is worth the extra price they pay.