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Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

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Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#151

Post by byoung2 »

mcmancini wrote: post #132
ars wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every other country except the US does not refrigerate eggs. I've personally kept US eggs unrefrigerated for 2 months with no problems - none of them were spoiled. Refrigeration is mainly for freshness (i.e. yolk firmness). It's not necessary to prevent spoiling.

"Almost every other country" doesn't wash their eggs, which strips the protective cuticle that allows eggs to remain safe at room temperature. They also immunize against salmonella. Again, do you have any sort of credible scientific basis behind your claims?

Interesting read

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why-th...

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#152

Post by dredmorbius »

derekp7 wrote: post #119
Aloisius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The color of an egg yolk is based on what the chicken ate and has no bearing on how idyllic their lives were. There are plenty of pasture raised chickens without the deep orange color because the plant material around them (you can get nearly white colored yolks from a hen that has literally miles of pasture around them). If there a lot of capsicum peppers around for instance, the yolks will turn almost red. How firm…

If you look on the egg carton, there should be a 3-digit date code telling you when the eggs were laid. That code is the day number of the year (so 032 would be Feb 1, 182 is July 1, etc). I've gotten in the habit of figuring out which day number it currently is, then at least I know how old the eggs are that I'm getting.

Julian day, FWIW.

The Linux / MacOS 'date' command will give you that:

    date +%j
They make date math easy.

If you want to know a specific date, add the Julian day to Jan 1 for the year:

    date -d "Jan 1 2014 + 358 days"

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#153

Post by pvaldes »

We often forget to remember that chickens have not an human brain.

The subliminal (and fake) statement in all those articles is that the chicken are a sort of "small little people crying" living very sad lives because they don't live like humans do. This is simply terrible.

Living in a farm, even in the best of farms, at Texas or New Jersey, could be perfectly claimed as a totally artificial and unnatural live for the point of view of a chicken. They are rainforest birds "cruelly" placed at deserts or in states with harsh winters living inside for 6 months a year. There are many reasons because a chicken could not to want to go outside. The claimed "because the farmer is a jerk" is wrong often.

They can do this because they are adaptable, and they just don't care so much as we do. But this is NOT natural for this species. If we really wish that chickens live "happy chicken lives" maybe we should grow them only in countries like Venezuela or Brazil...

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#154

Post by amalag »

steven2012 wrote: post #51

I'm usually not one to care much about where my food came from, but the one thing I pay attention to, for some weird reason, is eggs. I think the idea of trapping chickens in cages for their entire lives and having them produce eggs for us is revolting, a real-life Matrix situation. I'll pay a few bucks extra to make sure that the chickens get at least a modicum of better life than being trapped in a cage for their e…

Yet another reason not to eat chicken-periods.

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#155

Post by daxelrod »

kalleboo wrote: post #131

In contrast, here are the regulations in Sweden (probably similar elsewhere in the EU): * Battery cages: Banned * "Caged hens": Cage size must be at least 750 cm^2. Must have sand, a nest, and a stick to sit on. * "Free range indoors": Floor space must be at least 1,111 cm^2 per hen. 1/3 of the floor area must be sand or similar. Must have access to a nest, at least 15 cm of stick to sit on. * "Free range outdoors":…

> Swedish eggs are 100% salmonella-free.

Interesting! How do they accomplish this?

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#156

Post by wtbob »

sdenton4 wrote: post #96
wtbob wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've cut down on my calcium supplement usage by drying and crushing the eggshells and giving those to the birds. Seems like there's potential to get prion diseases there. Are chickens susceptible to prion diseases? Maybe compost the shells, then grow collards, kale and turnips in the soil and feed the less-appetising greens to the chickens?

Prions are in brains, not eggshells. Mad cow disease was caused by cows eating the crushed up brains of other cows, which is in itself a charming illustration of the ethics of our industrial food system.

Prions are misfolded proteins; while prion diseases occur in the brain, I do not know of any evidence that the prions themselves are not found throughout the nervous system. Are they in fact isolated to the brain?

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#157

Post by jmhobbs »

wtbob wrote: post #84
jmhobbs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeding marigold petals will darken a yolk pretty well, nothing artificial there. I've cut down on my calcium supplement usage by drying and crushing the eggshells and giving those to the birds.

> I've cut down on my calcium supplement usage by drying and crushing the eggshells and giving those to the birds. Seems like there's potential to get prion diseases there. Are chickens susceptible to prion diseases? Maybe compost the shells, then grow collards, kale and turnips in the soil and feed the less-appetising greens to the chickens?

Interesting. I've never heard of anyone having that issue. Honestly, I'm just doing what the old timers tell me they did. I've not seen any detrimental side effects but now I'm going to do my research.

Re: Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up to Be

#158

Post by sdenton4 »

wtbob wrote: post #156
sdenton4 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prions are in brains, not eggshells. Mad cow disease was caused by cows eating the crushed up brains of other cows, which is in itself a charming illustration of the ethics of our industrial food system.

Prions are misfolded proteins; while prion diseases occur in the brain, I do not know of any evidence that the prions themselves are not found throughout the nervous system. Are they in fact isolated to the brain?

(Long after the fact, so probably missed the boat. Also, I'm Not An Expert on This, so grains of salt, etc.)

My understanding of Mad Cow was that the prions involved were ones which were allowed to pass the blood/brain boundary, which keeps arbitrary chemicals in food from having a big effect on our neurological state. (Drugs like MDMA imitate certain chemicals used by the brain and are thus allowed to pass by.) One of the reasons cannibalism - especially when brains are involved - is that the brain proteins look like your brain proteins, and are thus expected to be on the 'brain' side of the boundary. So when cows eat dead cow brains, they get serious neurological diseases, just like human cannibals are known to. Prions may be arbitrary bad proteins, but they're especially problematic in the case of eating brains.

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