The incredible edible egg!

I recently re-watched Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. Watching the documentary brought me to the McDonald's website, where the "Food, nutrition, and fitness" section featured a white egg that reminded me of an article I read a couple years ago. I remembered the article saying free range brown eggs had a higher nutritional value than the McDonald's-type, white eggs. When I rolled over the white, McDonald's egg with my mouse, words appeared: "Take a closer look. We do. Every egg we serve is individually inspected, all three billion of them per year."

Dang, that's a lot of eggs! I think I WILL take a closer look.

All the eggs I buy at the Dane County Farmer's Market and my co-op are brown eggs, so why are McDonald's eggs white? Like any twenty-something looking for more information, I googled "brown egg." I just couldn't find that article I had remembered. What I did find was page after page of comments from the American Egg Board, all claiming there was no nutritional difference between brown and white eggs, and in fact, the only trait that ranked higher for brown eggs was price. We'll see, American Egg Board... I also found a recipe for hash brown egg casserole as result #7, but no article on the nutritiounal benefits of brown eggs on the first ten pages of results!

After I added a few additional search terms, google located the article I read a few years ago, the one that convinced me to stop eating white, McDonald's-type eggs. It turned out Mother Earth News has an entire the chicken and the egg series.

Reading the chicken and the egg series, it became clear that the higher monetary costs associated with brown eggs originally stemmed from the fact that hens that lay colorful eggs are larger. They require more space and a richer, more diverse diet to lay the same amount of eggs as white egg laying hens. For some time, commercial farms had preferred these white hens because they output more eggs with crowded conditions and lower quality feed. Watch out, though, savvy commercial farmers discovered long ago they can charge more for brown eggs at the supermarket, and they've sneaked in brown eggs that don't really roam or eat a nutrient rich diet. Unfortunately, free range chicken eggs have no standards or legal definition in the United States. Therefore, the American Egg Board was correct in their assessment that these brown, "free range" eggs were no more nutritious than their white, McDonald's-type counterparts.

I realized there's a lot more to free range eggs than I had suspected. Farmers can call their eggs free range even if the hens never chose to go outdoors or even if the only outdoor area available was dirt, not true pasture. When chickens have access to pasture, where they can eat weeds, grass, and insects, studies showed their eggs ARE better for you. Take that, American Egg Board!

This left me at a loss because now I'm not so sure how to tell if the eggs I buy are REALLY free range. I guess my best bet is to buy local eggs and ask the farmer, while the American Egg Board will keep spending millions lobbying in Washington and millions marketing their agenda to support factory farming, and we'll see who comes out on top- the chicken or the egg?

An introduction to my snobbish eating habits

I live in Madison, WI, home to the largest producer-only farmers' market in the country. The Dane County Farmers' market runs year round, and it features top-notch, locally grown, delicious meats, cheeses, baked goods, and produce. Of course, the pickings get pretty slim in the winter months- potatoes and other root vegetables, frozen meats, frost-ripened spinach, and, of course, all the cheese your heart desires.

This brings me to my first and most apparent snobbery: I can't eat cheese. Lactose intolerance is no joke, unless you're from Wisconsin. That makes it a pretty big joke.

I love having access to so many small, family-owned farms' products in Madison. It's an opportunity to be quite picky about my food choices. This brings me to my second food snobbery: I only eat free range meat and eggs. High density confinement of livestock, the practice of most factory farms in the U.S., is just gross. More on this later.

My third food snobbery has everything to do with the Willy Street Co-op. Co-op products fill in the holes left by shopping at the farmers' market, which leads to my third and final food snobbery: I eat mostly organic.

There's a brief overview of a foodsnoblogger.