“Cageless” Is Basically Meaningless, and the Other Lies Your Egg Carton Is Telling You

Eggs are simple and complex. This is one of the easiest dishes you can learn how to cook , but they can be prepared in a seemingly endless number of interesting and complex ways. From a chemical point of view, they are absolutely crazy, filled with all kinds of proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and (some) minerals. And, with two separate servings, they are practically a two-for-one meal.

The eggs come from chickens, whose diet and processing can also affect the taste and nutritional value of the egg. All the text you see on egg packaging is supposedly meant to help you make an egg-related purchasing decision, but some of these words are more helpful than others.

Egg words that mean absolutely nothing

These are words that you should ignore as they are just marketing terms with no real value.

• Fresh or Farm Fresh: Even if the eggs were processed, packaged and shipped the moment they came out of the chicken, this phrase would lose its meaning every moment. (The FDA grading system takes freshness into account anyway. More on that in a moment.)
• Natural: No egg is unnatural – that’s the nature of eggs.
• No Hormones or No Added Hormones: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of supplemental hormones in egg chicks over 60 years ago. Hormones are present in all living things, but according to upcertified.com , “growth or production hormones are never fed to young (young hens) raised for lay, nor during lay.”

Egg words that technically mean something but are useless

These are words and phrases that may be technically correct, but should not necessarily influence you when buying eggs.

• Brown : This tells you the color of the eggshell, which you can determine yourself by opening the box. The color of the shell does not affect the taste and nutritional value.
• Omega-3s: The hen that laid the egg ate something containing omega-3 fatty acids, but this does not guarantee that a significant amount of this acid was in the egg.
• Free Cage: The birds that laid these eggs weren’t kept in cages, but that doesn’t mean they ever went outside or weren’t crammed into an overcrowded barn.
• Fertile: Those chickens were fucking. (There is no proven nutritional benefit from this.)

Egg words that can actually tell you something about the egg (or the hen that laid it)

Finally some useful information!

• Free Range: According to Certifiedhumane.org , the USDA requirement for “free range” is “outdoor access” or “outdoor access”. “In some cases, this may mean access only through the ‘hole’, without full-body access to the street and without a minimum space requirement.” If, however, your eggs are HFAC Certified ^Humane® Free Range, this means that the hens had access to two square feet of open space per bird and were outside for at least six hours a day, weather permitting.
• Pasture Raised : As with “free range”, there is no strict legal definition of the term, but the HFAC Certified Humane ^® “Pasture Raised” requirement is very precise. If you see this mark, it means that there were no more than 1,000 birds per 2.5 acres (108 sq. ft. per bird), and that the fields in which they lived alternated. According to Certifiedhumane.org , “chickens should be outdoors year-round, either in mobile or fixed enclosures where the hens can go inside at night to protect themselves from predators, or up to two weeks a year, just because of very inclement weather.”
• Pesticide Free: No pesticides have been used to grow the food the chickens eat.
• Vegetarian: The chickens didn’t eat meat, but that means they didn’t eat worms, which means they didn’t peck at the dirt outside.
• Antibiotic-Free: According to The Atlantic , “This term means that farmers did not use antibiotics in chicken feed or water during the rearing period or when the eggs were laid.” It doesn’t directly affect the quality or taste of the eggs you eat, but buying eggs that have been produced without the use of antibiotics supports farmers who are “losing some of them to disease in the name of the broader idea that overuse antibiotics leads to superbugs.” In other words: Fewer antibiotics lead to fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria is not the kind of bacteria you want to encourage.

But what about “organic”?

According to organic consumption . “But things can get tricky when it comes to outdoor access.

As you can see from the 2018 PBS segment above, the farms that “organic” eggs come from can look very different. Some chickens actually manage to live life like something out of a children’s storybook, foraging in soil and sun, while others spend most of their lives in sheds, spending “outdoors” time on the porch.

However, this may change as the Biden administration revisits the previous administration’s interpretation that the USDA does not have the authority to set conditions for animals. This will “prohibit the use of the porch as an open space in organic production over time.”

However, it’s worth noting that some experts, such as the MD interviewed by PBS for the segment above, argue that keeping chickens in aviaries, such as porches, is safer as it prevents them from being infested by wild birds.

If you’re concerned about the amount (and type) of space taken up by egg-producing hens, you can check out the Cornucopia Institute’s Organic Egg Scorecard , which rates egg brands labeled “organic” on a scale of one to five eggs based on access. to open space, the amount of indoor and outdoor space, the alternation of pastures and transparency.

Size and classification

The two most common and easily understood markings you’ll find on egg packaging are variety and size. According to the USDA , there are three consumer grades of eggs:

United States (USA) Grade AA, A and B. Grade is determined by the internal quality of the egg and the appearance and condition of the eggshell. Eggs of any quality class may differ in weight (size). American grade AA eggs have a thick and hard protein; yolks are high, round, practically without defects; and a clean, undamaged shell.

Freshness also plays a role in determining grade: the USDA simply states that only “the freshest, highest quality eggs will receive grade AA”. All whole eggs sold in grocery stores are almost always Grade A or AA; Grade B eggs are sold in dried, frozen and dried egg form.

Egg sizes range from “small” to “giant”, with size determined by the average weight of a dozen :

• Crumb eggs should be at least 15 ounces per dozen.
• Small eggs should be at least 18 ounces per dozen.
• Average eggs should be at least 21 ounces per dozen.
• Large eggs should be at least 24 ounces per dozen.
• Very large eggs should be at least 27 ounces per dozen.
• Large eggs should be at least 30 ounces per dozen.

Most eggs sold in grocery stores are large or extra large, although it is possible to find a medium-sized egg in a box marked “large” if the average weight of all 12 eggs is 24 ounces or more.

If all this seems too hard to remember, you can always build a chicken coop and raise your own chickens or buy eggs from a local farm. The yolks in locally farmed eggs are darker in color and richer in flavor than factory farmed eggs and evoke a pleasantly smug sense of moral high ground. (My favorite eggs come from my dad’s chickens, but Vital Farms, which ranks very highly on the Organic Egg Scorecard , comes in a very close second place.)

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