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[ninja intro animation]
You love eggs, and I love eggs too. But what kind of eggs do you like? I bet you like HEALTHY
eggs, that come from happy, healthy chickens. So you bought some of these "Free Range" eggs
because you heard that they are be better for you AND better for the chickens. But are
your eggs REALLY "free range", or are you being scammed? Well, fortunately, there's
an amazingly simple and very cool way to find out.
You might be choosing free range eggs because you've been told that THESE hens are living
under more humane conditions, or that the eggs themselves are healthier for us. There's
a lot of controversy about these questions. And the real answer, like so many in the nutrition
field, is that "it depends".
Part of the problem is in the labelling, and standards that govern the conditions of egg
production. There are so many variables and uncertainties that it's impossible to know
exactly what you are buying. Even the definitions for what all these labels mean, like "free
range", "cage free", or "barn-roaming", all depend on where you're living and what the
standards are in your area.
I'm not going to talk about all the various issues and problems with labels and standards
and local regulations right now. If you really want, YOU can investigate the regulations
in your area to learn all the specific details that apply there. Instead, wouldn't it be
nice to be able to just look at the eggs and know if they are free range or not? So here's
my advice... forget the claims made on the egg carton, and forget the labels and standards.
You can cut through all this complexity with this one very cool trick.
Ok, so let's say you are a hen in a cage, or in an enclosed barn, with one single food
source. You're probably not going to be very happy because you don't get to run around
outside in an open field. But your eggs are going to look identical to every other hen's
eggs. Identical food, identical looking eggs. Egg producers go to a lot of effort to ensure
that their eggs are uniform in every way. But that's not what you want, and that's not
what the hens want.
Surprisingly enough, chickens have different food preferences, just like humans do. If
you take a whole barn full of hens and let them roam freely around a field, each of them
will eat different things. Of course they'll all eat the standard grain, but they'll also
find many other items in the field to eat, like leaves and flowers, and insects. Some
of these items contain substances that impart a dark orange color to the egg yolks. The
substances are usually beneficial phytochemicals, related to vitamin A, called "carotenoids".
Now, since each hen will eat different amounts of these items, the egg yolks produced by
one hen will be slightly different in color from the eggs produced by other hens.
So that's what you look for. In a carton of true free range eggs, you should see yolks
of slightly varying colors. Unfortunately you won't know this when you are BUYING the
eggs, but after consuming one carton you'll know if a particular brand or label produces
the kinds of eggs you want. [Isn't that an awesome trick?]
Now, some egg producers intentionally feed their hens feed containing these carotenoids,
so all the egg yolks are uniformly dark orange. This is a scam. You want to see a variety
of colors that naturally result from hens that range freely and eat different things.
Ok, I hope my little trick helps - let me know if your "free range" eggs pass the test.
Maybe I'll keep a list so people can check it before buying.
Also, If you love eggs like I do, then you're interested in ALL of the various issues surrounding
egg production and preparation. There are many questions, for example:
* are eggs healthy at all? * should i buy those organic eggs?
* does it matter what color the shells are? * should I keep my eggs refrigerated?
* how many eggs can I eat per week? * is the cholesterol harmful?
* what are the healthiest ways to cook eggs? * should I buy those "omega-3" eggs?
There are too many of these questions and concerns to cover in one short video, but
don't worry, I'm going to cover each of them separately in my free newsletter. So sign
up at my blog, steveonhealth.com, right now!
And remember, you can't be scammed if you know the secrets. Stay informed!