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Why are some egg yolks so orange?

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Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#251

Post by robocat »

kixiQu wrote: post #247
robocat wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. But selecting formaldehyde for your scary example mostly just sounds scary because of it’s relation with embalming fluid. As you say, anything can be poisonous: the LD50 of many substances is surprisingly high https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples From https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/19th-century-f... In 1896, desperately concerned about diseases linked to pathogens in milk, h…

Can one really say that it's "mostly" its "relation with embalming fluid" that makes it scary... in a comment containing the line "at least 30 children had died two years prior due to use of the preservative"? Also I want to be careful not to allow lethality to be seen as coextensive with poisonousness. Non-acute effect is kind of the name of the game with additive-type doses. The bulk of the misery caused by "lead p…

But we are missing the counterfactual of how many lives were saved due to the antibiotic effects of safe amounts of formaldehyde (previously mentioned two drops of formalin). Pasteurisation dropped infant deaths by 2/3rds, so it is quite possible that overall the addition of formaldehyde saved many lives (hard to tell without more study of whatever facts are available).

  Nonetheless, the pasteurization movement was gaining steam. In 1909 Chicago became the first American city to enforce a compulsory milk pasteurization law, despite strong opposition at the state level. After vehement back-and-forth editorials, prolonged political maneuvering, and a typhoid epidemic blamed on raw milk, New York’s commissioner of health followed suit in 1914 with the enforcement of a previously adopted ordinance. Seven years later the city’s infant mortality rate dropped to 71 deaths per every 1,000 births—less than one-third of the rate in 1891.
Disclaimer: I am an armchair scientist, so I know nothing about the subject beyond my few searches. I am just trying to follow up on a “fact” that seems to be very biased. Even in modern times with strict standards and far far better systems of protection and antibiotic interventions, raw milk causes problems:

  Raw milk and raw milk products can be contaminated with bacteria that cause serious illness, hospitalization or even death. From 1998 through 2011, 148 outbreaks due to consumption of raw milk or raw milk products were reported to CDC. These resulted in 2,384 illnesses, 284 hospitalizations and 2 deaths. Most of the illnesses were caused by E. coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella or Listeria. A substantial proportion of the raw milk-associated disease burden falls on children; among the 104 outbreaks from 1998-2011 with information on the patients' ages available, 82% involved at least one person younger than 20 years old.
I would like to read this paywalled paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30234385/

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#252

Post by Melting_Harps »

yibg wrote: post #227
steeps wrote: post #17

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

Over here in the bay area some Japanese markets have "golden yolk" brand eggs that have deep orange colored yolks. I don't know if they're more nutritious / taste better but the texture is different. When frying these and regular store bought eggs in the same pan, they hold their shape better. The store bought eggs spreads out more and the egg white tears more easily.

> Over here in the bay area some Japanese markets have "golden yolk" brand eggs that have deep orange colored yolks. I don't know if they're more nutritious / taste better but the texture is different. When frying these and regular store bought eggs in the same pan, they hold their shape better. The store bought eggs spreads out more and the egg white tears more easily.

Your issues sound more like age than quality; I worked on small hobby farms with 10 hens and large scale farms with 1000s of laying hens and altered their feed to try and change the yolk colour. It's what you'd expect, actually, the more bugs and less processed food they ate (especially grass) the more gamey the eggs tasted. The more bread we fed them, with butters and additives, the lighter the yolks got.

We gave them kitchen scraps, and they visited the compost heaps for bugs and let them roam the gardens as a form of pest control; during the spring/summer they were learning to hunt down field mice and grasshoppers and the yolks got blood red as a result of this increase in protein. The egg shells were determined by breed, and quite consistently the same color as their ear areas [0].

Store bough eggs could be weeks old before they arrive to your kitchen, and even longer since most won't eat them right away, too.

In short, chicken breeds and their respective diets will be the main determinant of egg color and yolk respectively.

They are also pretty mean when in large groups to other hens, the term 'pecking order' is real in nature and more-so with hens who will bully an often feebler hen in order to establish dominance within the pack. Having a rooster sort of calms them down, but not in terms of hierarchy as they are hard-wired to asset dominance within their group. These things really do behave like little raptors, which is why I ate like a dozen eggs a day when I farmed. They ware also cannibals who will eat their own eggs for no apparent reason--they were all well fed and had plenty of other options for food.

0: https://vjppoultry.com/2018/03/25/egg-color-and-colored-earl...

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#253

Post by taneq »

robocat wrote: post #192
taneq wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the studies which show that wine connoisseurs are describing the colour, not the taste, of the wine. I've always found this highly suspect because I guarantee anyone who drinks wine regularly could fairly accurately judge what price bracket a wine came from, at least within a factor of 2-3. You could mistake a $10 wine for a $15 wine or vice versa but a $50 wine is noticeably different.

I suggest you organise this with your friends - it is a lot of fun and you can enjoy an adult science experiment. If you do want to try it, then two suggestions: 1. try to have some way to blind yourself from the results, 2. Make a decision whether you want everyone to get plastered or not. I did this a few years ago and it was heaps of fun, but I wasn’t careful about amounts so we all got trolleyed by mistake.

I'm always down for this kind of science. We actually did a similar experiment with rum a while ago, I was of the opinion that spirits denatured a little after they'd been open a while and didn't taste as nice, others disagreed and so we did an experiment.

Two bottles of rum were bought and stored for several months, one unopened and one opened with a modest amount imbibed from it. Then a brand new one was bought as a control. For each round of testing, while the rest of us were out of the room we had a volunteer pour out and label a sample per bottle per tester and record the labels before randomizing their order. Each tester then tried each of their samples and wrote down which bottle we thought the sample had come from. Afterwards we cross referenced the guesses with the original samples.

The end results were inconclusive but indicated that there wasn't much if any difference. My new hypothesis is that the effect I observed was actually due to the coke I was using as a mixer getting stale but much more data is needed.

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#254

Post by taneq »

bradknowles wrote: post #246
powersnail wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that some common ingredients have such strong flavor that the other ingredients are covered. We could reliably distinguish between coke and Diet Coke though.

My mom refused to believe that I could taste the difference between caffeine-free Diet Coke and the normal Diet Coke. She was trying to get me to decaffeinate myself. So, she made me take a blind taste test. I proved I was right and that I really could taste the difference, and she stopped trying to force me to decaffeinate myself. She was quite surprised and unhappy that I was right and that I really could taste the…

But all of these experts on the internet say you can't even tell the difference between coffee and tea if you're blindfolded let alone different types of soda so clearly you're wrong! /s

Seriously, though, one unreplicated headline-grabbing result can generate so very much "science says..." type rhetoric.

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#255

Post by taneq »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #237
powersnail wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that some common ingredients have such strong flavor that the other ingredients are covered. We could reliably distinguish between coke and Diet Coke though.

The Sprite vs Coke thing is surprising; Coke vs Diet Coke is not. I regularly find that I'm given Diet Coke even though I asked for regular. Aspartame and most other artificial sweeteners have a very distinctive flavor and I can generally detect it even in items I don't expect to find it in.

Likewise 'full fat' Coke tastes syrupy and sticky compared to artificially sweetened Coke. It's not so much a flavour thing as a texture thing.

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#256

Post by mikehotel »

wrycoder wrote: post #243
mikehotel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please share your rationale to further the conversation. Certainly each of us are responsible for our own decisions.

Because the recommendation appears to be based on faulty and even corrupt research done over sixty years ago. It’s too much to go into here, but you could look at the introduction to Gary Taubes’ 2020 book. It’s in the Kindle sample. I’m 80, have eaten at least two eggs a day for twenty years, and I’m fine. Not particularly overweight and no heart issues.

I read through the sample, thank you for referring it to me. I am somewhat familiar with keto/low-carb diets.

In reviewing Gary’s work, I did come across the study he did under Nutrition Science Initiative, and how the results didn’t support his claims. Have you had a chance to look into this?

(Aside: my dad is around your age, and has not yet quit smoking despite science since he doesn’t have any adverse effects. Be well!)

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#257

Post by taneq »

pegasus wrote: post #248
jjeaff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not in line with the blind taste tests I have seen. The vast majority of people not only can't pick out the more expensive wine, they also tend to prefer the cheaper wines.

I think he's talking about wine-lovers - not the vast majority of people by a large margin.

Even wine-likers would be able to tell, but the vast majority of people don't know much about any given niche, by definition. It's like saying "80% of people surveyed couldn't tell the difference between an AE86 and an AE85 just by driving them". Duh but the difference is there and not hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. We need to stop conflating general unfamiliarity with impossibility to distinguish.

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#258

Post by andrekandre »

h2odragon wrote: post #60
thom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get nauseous eating most store bought eggs, and it took me years and a couple of Reddit threads to realise this was the reason, as opposed to an allergy or whatever. Buying fresh I never have a problem.

I got whanging deadly headaches whenever i ate store / commercial eggs; I got chickens and discovered that its not actually the eggs thats the problem for me: If i feed my chickens non-medicated feed, I'm able to enjoy their eggs. If i get them the feed with amoxicillin in it, headaches. The wild thing is amoxicillin itself never seemed to have any bad side effect on me, I've done several courses of it over the years…

  > If i feed my chickens non-medicated feed, I'm able to enjoy their eggs. If i get them the feed with amoxicillin in it, headaches.
wow, i also get headaches when eating eggs... if its not amoxicillin itself, then what could it be?

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#259

Post by h2odragon »

andrekandre wrote: post #258
h2odragon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got whanging deadly headaches whenever i ate store / commercial eggs; I got chickens and discovered that its not actually the eggs thats the problem for me: If i feed my chickens non-medicated feed, I'm able to enjoy their eggs. If i get them the feed with amoxicillin in it, headaches. The wild thing is amoxicillin itself never seemed to have any bad side effect on me, I've done several courses of it over the years…

> If i feed my chickens non-medicated feed, I'm able to enjoy their eggs. If i get them the feed with amoxicillin in it, headaches. wow, i also get headaches when eating eggs... if its not amoxicillin itself, then what could it be?

I assume the chicken metabolizes some of it (or some other ingredient) into something that triggers that reaction in me. My family aren't affected by it, including my daughter. Its apparently not common.

I dunno how likely that is; the egg shouldn't have more than trace amounts of any contaminants in the chicken; the egg is filtered a step further than the meat is.

I found that salt enhanced the headache potential a lot, but with "clean" eggs it doesn't matter. but after this long i dont put salt on 'em anyhow.

Also, I grew up on a farm and ate a lot of eggs as a kid, those chickens weren't fed anything but some corn and were otherwise free range, so perhaps its a trained sensitivity?

Re: Why are some egg yolks so orange?

#260

Post by tristor »

rootusrootus wrote: post #218
powersnail wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did an experiment in class, where we drank sodas blindfolded. Not only did we fail to distinguish Coke Cola and Pepsi, we couldn't even tell sprite from coke! I would have never believed that they taste so incredibly similar without the experiment.

I'm skeptical. Coca Cola and Pepsi have fairly distinct flavor profiles. There are some that I could see being more problematic. Like RC vs Pepsi, which have a similar profile. But Sprite? Nah, that's got a strong citrus component that definitely doesn't exist in a cola.

> But Sprite? Nah, that's got a strong citrus component that definitely doesn't exist in a cola.

It may surprise you to find out, then, that Coca-Cola is actually a lemon-lime soda. In fact, all Colas are predominantly citrus flavored.

"The primary modern flavoring ingredients in a cola drink are citrus oils (from orange, lime, and lemon peels), cinnamon, vanilla, and an acidic flavorant." [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola

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