Eggs: what's the difference?

A few years ago, Mother Earth News undertook a bit of interesting research. Apparently, the professional egg producers had long insisted that no research had ever shown free-range eggs to differ nutritionally from factory-farmed eggs. Well, that wasn't exactly the truth, since no study had ever been done comparing the two. So, Mother Earth News set out to have some free-range eggs tested. I remember reading the results of their tests at the time -- the free-range eggs were more nutritious.

A couple days ago, I received my February-March 2009 issue of Mother Earth News, and I learned that they've continued this research. Four pastured farms (Texas, Kentucky, Kansas, Pennsylvania) sent their eggs to a lab, and again the free-range eggs had more nutrition than what the USDA claims is in eggs -- data that is, of course, based upon factory-farmed chickens.

So, what's the difference? Free-range eggs contain . . .

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 X more omega-3 fatty acids (the good one)
• 3 X more vitamin E
• 7 X more beta carotene
• 3-6 X more vitamin D (On the high end, this means that an egg contains 126 percent of the US RDA of Vit. D, which is quite significant since Vit. D deficiency is becoming a problem in this country.)
  

For those of us with our own chickens that are free-ranged, this comes as no surprise -- especially the beta carotene. Store-bought eggs have a very pale yellow yolk, whereas free-range chicken eggs are school-bus yellow.

Mike and I are still working our way through Michael Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food, but this really corroborates his research on the difference between naturally-raised food and factory-farmed food. I'll be doing a review of that book when we're done with it.