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Why are some egg yolks so orange?

foodunfolded.com

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Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#11

Post by blamazon »

arkj wrote: post #10
Jaruzel wrote: post #3

To save people a pointless click: In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it. So, don’t worry too much about the colour – just enjoy your egg!

>> 4. I will vote you down if you 'tl;dr and summarise' any article; We're all grown-ups, and we all know how to read thanks. Isn’t your comment against your own policy?

We all know how to read, but do we all know how to click?

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#12

Post by scns »

arkj wrote: post #10
Jaruzel wrote: post #3

To save people a pointless click: In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it. So, don’t worry too much about the colour – just enjoy your egg!

>> 4. I will vote you down if you 'tl;dr and summarise' any article; We're all grown-ups, and we all know how to read thanks. Isn’t your comment against your own policy?

Cognitive dissonance. Believed i didn't have it, i was wrong

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#13

Post by hongloumeng »

Not too long ago in China, consumers preferred duck eggs with red tinted yolks. Market vendors would crack off the top half of an egg and display its yolk, and consumers thought the redder the better.

So, of course, farmers started feeding a carcinogenic dye called Sudan Red directly to the ducks.

* http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/189567.htm

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#14

Post by madaxe_again »

4ad wrote: post #6
xd wrote: post #4

I have a few ex-battery hens and what I now view as a good egg is one you can crack into a pan of boiling water and it holds together, giving you a perfect poached egg in a couple of minutes. Store bought eggs tend to fall apart in water.

That's because store bought eggs are not fresh.

Not fresh is an understatement in many parts of the world. In the U.K., it’s up to 60 days - and in the U.S., it’s common for eggs in grocery stores to have been laid 6 months previously.

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#17

Post by steeps »

J. Kenji López-Alt has a bit in his Food Lab book where he explores the effect of yolk colour on taste. Paraphrasing, the takeaway is that people generally perceive redder/deeper yolks as more flavoursome, but if you remove this factor (with food colouring, say), then people can't tell the difference. He summarises this in a twitter thread: [1]

[1]: https://nitter.net/kenjilopezalt/status/1176542696724320256

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#18

Post by mintone »

A brand in the UK called Clarence Court started producing a range of eggs (maybe a decade ago?) that have an intensely orange yolk [1] and this became a real differentiator, in some ways an indicator of quality. I know when an egg is Clarence Court in a restaurant for instance (and have confirmed numerous times). They are also delicious eating.

The effect is so profound that supermarket own brands have now also started producing similarly richly-orange-yolked eggs.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAe_TN_WsAAyQ9-.jpg:large

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#19

Post by em500 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #3

To save people a pointless click: In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it. So, don’t worry too much about the colour – just enjoy your egg!

The other points are that:

- color preference varies by country

- in mass production, the yolk color can be tweaked by the producer with food additives (e.g. https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_NA/products/carotenoids/carophyll...)

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#20

Post by bencollier49 »

mintone wrote: post #18

A brand in the UK called Clarence Court started producing a range of eggs (maybe a decade ago?) that have an intensely orange yolk [1] and this became a real differentiator, in some ways an indicator of quality. I know when an egg is Clarence Court in a restaurant for instance (and have confirmed numerous times). They are also delicious eating. The effect is so profound that supermarket own brands have now also start…

I noticed the supermarkets producing copycats and became suspicious of the method by which they achieved the colour. There's something qualitatively different about the darkened yolk in the Clarence Court eggs, and it makes me wonder about additives, I guess they're just adding caretinoids to the feed.
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