19 ms·

Why are some egg yolks so orange?

275 points by azizsaya 4y ago

komposit 4y ago
This reminds me of something I saw on TV once where a farmer was feeding his chickens lots of spicy red peppers. Made the yolk a deep red and apparently spicy as well.
phonescreen_man 4y ago
Eggcellent, what a cracking article!
Jaruzel 4y ago
To save people a pointless click: In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it. So, don’t worry too much about the colour – just enjoy your egg!
- fisian 4y ago
  I found that conclusion weirdly dismissive, given how detailed the carotenes and their effect and regional preferences were described. It doesn't do the article justice to summarize it like that.
- azizsaya 4y ago
  That's Eggstreme @Jaruzel. Humankind would still be living in caves without your public service.
- arkj 4y ago
  >> 4. I will vote you down if you 'tl;dr and summarise' any article; We're all grown-ups, and we all know how to read thanks. Isn’t your comment against your own policy?
  - blamazon 4y ago
    We all know how to read, but do we all know how to click?
  - scns 4y ago
    Cognitive dissonance. Believed i didn't have it, i was wrong
  - Jaruzel 4y ago
    You get an up-vote for that. Well done! I felt the whole article was pointless fluff, and just had to call it out. I feel no guilt.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    did you just research someone’s profile in an attempt to nit pick something they said? There’s definitely a problem online these days, when people take 5 pages to state 2 sentences worth of points, and it’s not the TLDR people…
    - azizsaya 4y ago
      did you just waste a min of your time by stating the obvious and trying to add some fuel to fire? article and discussion is about Eggs! you are free to click and comment on something else if you find it pointless.
      - tekknik 4y ago
        > did you just waste a min of your time by stating the obvious and trying to add some fuel to fire? How is correcting or calling out someone’s sketch behavior wasting time? > article and discussion is about Eggs! you are free to click and comment on something else if you find it pointless. Yes and I found it interesting. What gave you the idea that I don’t? Perhaps maybe I don’t talk much on this site and read more articles and comments than you think? And as far as adding more fuel to the fire, what exactly are you doing?
- em500 4y ago
  The other points are that: - color preference varies by country - in mass production, the yolk color can be tweaked by the producer with food additives (e.g. https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_NA/products/carotenoids/carophyll/eggs.html https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_NA/products/carotenoids/carophyll...)
xd 4y ago
I have a few ex-battery hens and what I now view as a good egg is one you can crack into a pan of boiling water and it holds together, giving you a perfect poached egg in a couple of minutes. Store bought eggs tend to fall apart in water.
- 4ad 4y ago
  That's because store bought eggs are not fresh.
  - madaxe_again 4y ago
    Not fresh is an understatement in many parts of the world. In the U.K., it’s up to 60 days - and in the U.S., it’s common for eggs in grocery stores to have been laid 6 months previously.
    - thom 4y ago
      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.
      - h2odragon 4y ago
        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 without trouble.
        andrekandre 4y ago
        > 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?
waihtis 4y ago
Very interesting. I alternate between purchasing organic eggs and a variety called the Omega-3 egg; the former having a very bright yellow yolk and latter a deeper orange. Was always curious if one is ”better” than the other. Interestingly, the omega variety tastes much better.
- dav_Oz 4y ago
  Taste can be highly subjective and suggestible. There is a german saying: Das Auge isst mit. (literally: the eye eats with you) which kind of makes you aware that a lot of things end up determining taste [0] beside the direct experience of consistency and composition. Applying to colors: one can use different colors in placebo pills to suggest very different effects [1]. In case of direct intervention, different diets given to hens can significantly modify the fat composition and content [2]. Fat being a major constituent of direct taste experience by "enhancing" (solution medium for phytochemicals etc.) and determining consistentcy. There are basically no carbs in eggs so in this case this can be left out. Taste: PUFAs (Omega-3s, Omega-6s, Omega-9s ...) are chemically speaking highly unstable (multiple double bonds) under normal conditions, all by themselves they oxidize completely very quickly* to avoid this you can shield them for a while with antioxidants (e.g. phytochemicals) and encase them with more stable fat (SFA (no double bonds), MUFA (one double bond)). PUFAs with their significantly lower melting point contribute to the perceived creaminess at even very cool temperatures: e.g. irish butter (high Omega-3 content) vs "normal"/cheap/highly industrialized butter (low). [*consequently becoming "rancid" in taste. A lot of people are actually so used to that taste in highly processed/fast food (oxidized fats through excessive heat) that they consider it "very tasty". Analogous to the "burned" coffee taste/smell a lot of older folks (habit, childhood memories) still enjoy.] Health: In the typical modern western diet (because of massive inclusion of industrial cheap plant sources) the ratio of Omega 3's/6's is way off like 20:1 and more in favor of 6's. Analogous to Vitamin A (Carotenoids/Retinol) the plant form of Omega 3 (ALA) is inefficiently converted[3] by humans (young women probably because of different needs (pregnancy) can utilize it a bit better than men) to a bioactive form, adding to the disbalance. We evolved to get a significant amount of Omega 3's from animal and marine (rivers/sea) sources (ultimately the primary bioreactors for easily convertible EPA/DHA being (marine) algea and phytoplankton). Maybe what hens get to eat could be seen as something very minor to consider. I actually would like it on the label (as an ingredients list for the sophisticated "bioreactor" maybe incl. the conditions like hours outside to produce Vitamin D, antibiotics given ...) that's why I'm more inclined if I am able to buy regionally to see for myself. In talks with farmers a lot of them - if they bother to engage in a conversation - are actually very knowledgeable and aware about this, as a city dweller just informing myself from books/studies I'm constantly impressed about their virtuosity. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski#Anecdotes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski#Anecdotes [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/ [2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00343-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00343-1 [3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Conversion_efficiency_of_ALA_to_EPA_and_DHA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Conversio...
intsunny 4y ago
When I moved to Germany five years ago, I was stunned at how intensely orange the yolks were compared to the USA. But now I've noticed the color has significantly mellowed out. Glad to know that this does not correlate with a decrease in quality.
hongloumeng 4y ago
Not too long ago in China, consumers preferred duck eggs with red tinted yolks. Market vendors would crack off the top half of an egg and display its yolk, and consumers thought the redder the better. So, of course, farmers started feeding a carcinogenic dye called Sudan Red directly to the ducks. * http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/189567.htm http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/189567.htm
- solarist 4y ago
  That’s a perfect example of Goodhart's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- ryanmercer 4y ago
  Turmeric has had similar issues, with some individuals adding industrial lead chromate to improve the colors (and add to the weight, as it is sold by weight) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/28/turmeric-wellness-potion-moment-may-owe-its-yellow-color-lead-contamination-study-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/28/turmeric-...
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    And if it was sold by volume they'd just be using some other type of filler. Outside of rigorous regulation it's hard to figure out how to fix this sort of thing. But then you end can also end up with massive factory farms or meat processing plants etc that can min/max the penalties against the profits, not to mention corrupt inspections.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Chinese markets strike me as absolutely brutal. I mean, there is always some theft, fraud etc. in any market (one of the oldest written records of humanity is a customer complaint about bad copper sold by a certain Mesopotamian merchant called Ea-nasir in 1750 BC), but stuff like poisoning your customers with Sudan Red, or adding melamine to yoghurt, or frying food on gutter oil seems to always be reported from China.
erk__ 4y ago
This also means that goose eggs are very yellow since their diet is nearly exclusively grass, at least when they are walking free.
poulpy123 4y ago
I wasn't aware that the red/orange leaves of autmns had their color due to caroten !
- WithinReason 4y ago
  This was my main takeaway :)
steeps 4y ago
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 https://nitter.net/kenjilopezalt/status/1176542696724320256
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Some french tv channel did a quick game test, asking a bunch of students to sip colored soda and guess the flavour. Green was mint, Red was strawberry, Yellow was citrus, they were all strawberry. Surprising "reality".
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I’ve always wondered if part of the reason the “clear” craze for sodas died off is that you didn’t have the right signals to tell you what it tastes like.
    - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
      What about canned soda? If drinking from a can it's pretty hard to see what color the soda is, without making a point of checking. I wonder if the can color is then the signal?
      - 0ldskool 4y ago
        color is probably associated with certain flavors. For most people our eyesight is used to identify things more so then other senses. If you don't see the color you probably have to work slightly harder to identify what is being eaten. How many people have a tongue so accurate they can eat/drink food blindfolded and identify it?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    The same thing is true about red and white wine. Color it all red and no one can tell the difference.
mintone 4y ago
A brand in the UK called Clarence Court started producing a range of eggs (maybe a decade ago?) that have an intensely orange yolk [1] and this became a real differentiator, in some ways an indicator of quality. I know when an egg is Clarence Court in a restaurant for instance (and have confirmed numerous times). They are also delicious eating. The effect is so profound that supermarket own brands have now also started producing similarly richly-orange-yolked eggs. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAe_TN_WsAAyQ9-.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAe_TN_WsAAyQ9-.jpg:large
- bencollier49 4y ago
  I noticed the supermarkets producing copycats and became suspicious of the method by which they achieved the colour. There's something qualitatively different about the darkened yolk in the Clarence Court eggs, and it makes me wonder about additives, I guess they're just adding caretinoids to the feed.
  - andrewnicolalde 4y ago
    Yes! I completely agree. The yolks of Clarence Court-alikes just don’t feel as “rich”, whatever that means, and I can readily tell the difference when having yolk-heavy food like egg soldiers, for example.
    - bencollier49 4y ago
      English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class. :-) Speaking as one of them!
      - traceroute66 4y ago
        > English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class Put the Daily Mail down right this instant !
      - yaseer 4y ago
        "I can readily tell the difference between Clarence court eggs and copycats..." is an extract from 'Middle Class British Problems' if ever I heard one! :)
tacticaldev 4y ago
Just another example of how Organic (clean food) propaganda isn't based in science. I can't tell you how often I hear cooks swear by their redish, darkwe yolk eggs for having some kind of magic properties. Interesting article, good read.
- throwamon 4y ago
  Not disagreeing that there's plenty of propaganda and bad science out there, but I'm not sure why you chose to single out "organic propaganda". The article talks about the industry artificially adding substances to the yolk, which afaik is precisely what organic food people are against. Also, carotenoids may not be magic, but it's important to consume them.
- tomxor 4y ago
  > I can't tell you how often I hear cooks swear by their redish, darkwe yolk eggs for having some kind of magic properties. To complicate matters, psychology can play a significant role in the material result when making things. It's like the placebo effect but for the engineer, the cook, the mechanic, the designer etc. Obviously cooking is about more than the ingredients, they are important, but timing and intuition play a big role, the latter can be undermined if they start without believing in the ingredients... this applies to programming just as much as cooking.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  I’d probably use the term “marketing” rather than “propaganda”.
guerby 4y ago
What I've Learned did a video on eggs in Japan (where eggs are differentiated depending on feed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjrxXC3kGf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjrxXC3kGf4 "The #1 Egg consumer is Japan. Here's why. ($70 vs $1 Egg)"
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  This was a nice little side tangent. Thanks for sharing.
riffraff 4y ago
Extra bit of trivia: the article mentions that southern Europe prefers darker orange, and indeed it's not uncommon in Italian to hear the egg be divided in "bianco e rosso" (White and red). In recent years it seems the yellow color has become more common though.
- carlob 4y ago
  I have seen eggs marketed specifically for pasta making which were darker orange to guarantee yellower pasta.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  Their fanta is a darker orange too!
dzhiurgis 4y ago
I'm a sucker for premium orange yolk eggs. My partner is sucker for buying eggs from a guy who grows them in his backyard. Sometimes, especially when making creamy scrambled eggs I can almost taste fishy or shellfish flavour (not something I like). We are based in NZ and I've heard people use sea shells as a source of calcium for hens, but I find hard to believe that it could be it.
- ryanmercer 4y ago
  The "fishy" taste is likely indicative of a higher omega 3 content, you get the same taste from 100% grass fed and finished beef and buffalo due to the higher omega 3 content.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    Omega-3 doesn't taste like fish unless it's literally fish oil, which is often an additive to improve the 3-6 ratio of foods. Flax seed doesn't taste like fish... Grass fed beef tasting "fishy"? I've never experienced that and can't imagine how it would work.
    - geitir 4y ago
      In my experience cheaper grass fed beef in the US commonly tastes gamey which can be interpreted as fishy. More expensive grass fed doesn't have this problem, so it likely has to do with diet or the cut.
      - robocat 4y ago
        The difference could also be due to how long the beef is hung or aged. Beef tasting too “gamey” might not be hung long enough (suggestion made last night by small farmer friends, fwiw).
    - 0ldskool 4y ago
      i guess it depends on what type of fish you eat. I often eat relatively fresh salmon. I wouldn't say it tastes fishy even though its fish. It tasty oily, so much oil comes out in the baking process.
glandium 4y ago
Similar answer to the question "why is salmon pink/orange?".
TecoAndJix 4y ago
I got five chickens last year and now have more eggs then I know what to do with (so we give a lot away). Everyone that has them says they are so much better and I have wondered if that is just due to them being able to see the chickens and their home. It is near impossible to hard boil the eggs they lay because the “membrane” (layer between the shell and egg-stuff) is so thick. The yolk is a darker yellow as well. I feed them mid-priced crumbles from tractor supply and give them scraps maybe once per week.
- mpalczewski 4y ago
  I finally found a full proof way of making any egg easy to peel. I wonder if it would work with eggs like these. I pressure steam then in an instant pot for about three minutes.
- yostrovs 4y ago
  Keep the fresh eggs on the counter for a week or so before boiling, and your shell will come off properly.
  - caymanjim 4y ago
    If you do this, it's vital that you do not wash the bloom off. Once you wash eggs you have to refrigerate them.
    - hammock 4y ago
      No one does that except the egg processors
      - caymanjim 4y ago
        I've seen many amateurs do it. There's been a big uptick over the past decade of people raising chickens in their back yards without having any experience or guidance. Not that you need a lot; just important to do some research.
      - Kerrick 4y ago
sethammons 4y ago
I don't know. I raise chickens. The only difference I've been able to determine between darker and lighter yolks are the age of the eggs. Same food for all the birds. If we don't go through the eggs fast enough, they go from orange to yellow. I'm not saying you can't fake it with additives, but the post must be missing something.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  This is totally correct in my experience also raising chickens. Although, the old eggs from our chickens never got to be as colorless as the store bought.
- beowulfey 4y ago
  Oxidation maybe? It would probably lead to color loss as carotenoids age. Would cause the yolks to eventually fade. I just googled -- eggshells increase in permeability to oxygen after the first week, so my guess is this is what you are seeing!
locallost 4y ago
Color is very important for food. My favorite story is the one [1] with wine tasting, where the same white wine was tasted twice by the same people, in one case with tasteless red color added. The taste was reported to be completely different. While it might be contributed to wine tasting being total BS, my favorite part of this study was that its author became a wine maker :-). [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...
- phonypc 4y ago
  The color of food and drink certainly has suggestive power, but the popular conception of what that wine study shows, i.e. that wine tasting is complete junk, is itself complete junk. A reddit comment summarizes it best: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4q6485/til_a_scientist_invited_wine_experts_to_give/d4qrhna/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4q6485/til_a...
  - locallost 4y ago
    I never said wine tasting was junk, but there is plenty of baloney in the reddit post. The worst part is the claim the author is not a scientist, merely an academic doing a study. Was his white coat missing? He did not attend Science University? I also posted that the author is a wine maker, so it's clear he doesn't view the wine world as junk. My take away from it is that there's a lot going on in our head based on the input from the senses, that things are not black and white, and that it's difficult to rate things objectively because of it. And that this is completely fine, since we are humans and not machines, and if you can taste black currants in a wine and this makes you happy, knock yourself out.
wirthjason 4y ago
I generally could care less about the color of an egg yolk but there’s one exception: the egg in ramen. It’s not that it tastes particularly better, marinating anything in soy sauce for a couple days will make it taste delicious. It’s often said we eat first with our eyes. I enjoy the contrast of colors. The dark red/orange looks much more appealing than a pale yellow yolk floating in a bowl of soup.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
Why do all the images in this article have wrong/fake EXIF? (Well, not all; it looks like that they copied the EXIF of the first image (which has the matching EXIF Image description of "Egg yolk in wooden spoon on eggs. Close up.", together with all the other camera/lens info) to all the other images for some reason. Nothing serious, but weird practice nevertheless.)
- aendruk 4y ago
  I’m curious to learn how you ran across this. A browser extension that surfaces the data? Or do you regularly go around downloading and inspecting images as you read?
  - thrdbndndn 4y ago
    Yeah, I use an extension [1] that shows EXIF data on hover. Very handy. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-quickview/kjihpkahhpobojbdnknpelpgmcihnepj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-quickview/kji... (there are lots more advanced ones on Chrome store / AMO, but this works for me.)
- b0ner_t0ner 4y ago
  My guess is the intern who saved the photos wanted to make them the same dimensions copy and pasted all subsequent photos onto/from the first photo exporting from that; that's why the captions are the same for the rest of the photos. Edit: and also notice the file names as in-article-eggyolks#.jpg which confirms my theory somebody saving over the original photo.
greggeter 4y ago
guilhas 4y ago
Quality of the food and treatment of the animal? Generally home grown chickens are more colored than supermarket
admeyer 4y ago
We get a lot of eggs from our neighbors and other local egg producers who put a lot of effort into raising healthy chickens. In addition to a deep-colored yolk I like to see how tall the yolk sits in the pan. For freshness, you might see thin, white ropes trailing from the yolk called chalazae.
0des 4y ago
chitin from bugs.
jonathanlydall 4y ago
I live in South Africa and the yolks of the eggs my wife and I buy are absolutely not nearly white. It may differ by supermarket though, I generally shop at Woolworths which markets itself as having the best quality food, while also charging extra as a result. Otherwise, perhaps it's only something which tends to occur with chickens grown by people for themselves in rural areas?
hbarka 4y ago
While we’re at it, can we also talk about the use of glyphosate aka RoundUp in our farms? It’s routinely used before and after a harvest in order to accelerate desiccation and allow the farmers to have multiple yields in a single season. Dyeing egg yolks and dying organs from RoundUp what have we become. [1] https://investigatemidwest.org/2019/05/26/controversial-pesticide-use-sees-dramatic-increase-across-the-midwest/amp/ https://investigatemidwest.org/2019/05/26/controversial-pest... [2] https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-use-desiccant-doubles-human-contamination/ https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-use-desiccant-...
cpr 4y ago
Growing up as a 'white bread' kid in the 60's and 70's, I had never had a farm fresh egg, nor local hand-made bacon. So you can imagine my delight when, exactly 40 years ago today on our honeymoon, we stayed with some friends of my parents on the Maine coast (Brooklin, in Penobscot Bay, on a little inlet called Herrick's Bay -- just visited there again last week) and they provided fresh local eggs and bacon for our breakfasts. It was truly ambrosial! (Of course, being in the first days of our honeymoon, in a romantic little converted boathouse out over the water might also have had something to do with it.) But I can attest that fresh eggs are night and day compared to store bought. (Of course, we're spoiled now, getting our eggs from friends who raise free-range chickens, so fresh eggs are just table stakes.)
- Sebguer 4y ago
  I'd think you'd only get table steaks if your friends also had cows. On a serious note, it's kind of wild how horrible modern chickens are. Great twitter thread I saw yesterday: https://twitter.com/MrSollozzo/status/1515324097223225345 https://twitter.com/MrSollozzo/status/1515324097223225345
partiallypro 4y ago
You can feed chickens red pepper flakes and their yolk will become darker and more orange in hue. Has no effect on taste, it's just for looks.
racl101 4y ago
As long as the egg doesn't float when i put it in water, I'm good.
plasticchris 4y ago
Feeding the chickens dyes can make the yolk any color you want, they used to do it as a demo for chicken feed sales by making the yolks all different colors.

275 points by azizsaya 4y ago

This reminds me of something I saw on TV once where a farmer was feeding his chickens lots of spicy red peppers. Made the yolk a deep red and apparently spicy as well.

phonescreen_man 4y ago

Eggcellent, what a cracking article!

Jaruzel 4y ago

To save people a pointless click: In the end, your egg depends on what the chicken eats, and the chicken depends on what the farmer feeds it. So, don’t worry too much about the colour – just enjoy your egg!

fisian 4y ago
I found that conclusion weirdly dismissive, given how detailed the carotenes and their effect and regional preferences were described. It doesn't do the article justice to summarize it like that.
azizsaya 4y ago
That's Eggstreme @Jaruzel. Humankind would still be living in caves without your public service.
arkj 4y ago
>> 4. I will vote you down if you 'tl;dr and summarise' any article; We're all grown-ups, and we all know how to read thanks. Isn’t your comment against your own policy?
- blamazon 4y ago
  We all know how to read, but do we all know how to click?
- scns 4y ago
  Cognitive dissonance. Believed i didn't have it, i was wrong
- Jaruzel 4y ago
  You get an up-vote for that. Well done! I felt the whole article was pointless fluff, and just had to call it out. I feel no guilt.
- tekknik 4y ago
  did you just research someone’s profile in an attempt to nit pick something they said? There’s definitely a problem online these days, when people take 5 pages to state 2 sentences worth of points, and it’s not the TLDR people…
  - azizsaya 4y ago
    did you just waste a min of your time by stating the obvious and trying to add some fuel to fire? article and discussion is about Eggs! you are free to click and comment on something else if you find it pointless.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      > did you just waste a min of your time by stating the obvious and trying to add some fuel to fire? How is correcting or calling out someone’s sketch behavior wasting time? > article and discussion is about Eggs! you are free to click and comment on something else if you find it pointless. Yes and I found it interesting. What gave you the idea that I don’t? Perhaps maybe I don’t talk much on this site and read more articles and comments than you think? And as far as adding more fuel to the fire, what exactly are you doing?
em500 4y ago
The other points are that: - color preference varies by country - in mass production, the yolk color can be tweaked by the producer with food additives (e.g. https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_NA/products/carotenoids/carophyll/eggs.html https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_NA/products/carotenoids/carophyll...)

xd 4y ago

I have a few ex-battery hens and what I now view as a good egg is one you can crack into a pan of boiling water and it holds together, giving you a perfect poached egg in a couple of minutes. Store bought eggs tend to fall apart in water.

4ad 4y ago
That's because store bought eggs are not fresh.
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  Not fresh is an understatement in many parts of the world. In the U.K., it’s up to 60 days - and in the U.S., it’s common for eggs in grocery stores to have been laid 6 months previously.
  - thom 4y ago
    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.
    - h2odragon 4y ago
      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 without trouble.
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        > 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?

waihtis 4y ago

Very interesting. I alternate between purchasing organic eggs and a variety called the Omega-3 egg; the former having a very bright yellow yolk and latter a deeper orange. Was always curious if one is ”better” than the other. Interestingly, the omega variety tastes much better.

dav_Oz 4y ago
Taste can be highly subjective and suggestible. There is a german saying: Das Auge isst mit. (literally: the eye eats with you) which kind of makes you aware that a lot of things end up determining taste [0] beside the direct experience of consistency and composition. Applying to colors: one can use different colors in placebo pills to suggest very different effects [1]. In case of direct intervention, different diets given to hens can significantly modify the fat composition and content [2]. Fat being a major constituent of direct taste experience by "enhancing" (solution medium for phytochemicals etc.) and determining consistentcy. There are basically no carbs in eggs so in this case this can be left out. Taste: PUFAs (Omega-3s, Omega-6s, Omega-9s ...) are chemically speaking highly unstable (multiple double bonds) under normal conditions, all by themselves they oxidize completely very quickly* to avoid this you can shield them for a while with antioxidants (e.g. phytochemicals) and encase them with more stable fat (SFA (no double bonds), MUFA (one double bond)). PUFAs with their significantly lower melting point contribute to the perceived creaminess at even very cool temperatures: e.g. irish butter (high Omega-3 content) vs "normal"/cheap/highly industrialized butter (low). [*consequently becoming "rancid" in taste. A lot of people are actually so used to that taste in highly processed/fast food (oxidized fats through excessive heat) that they consider it "very tasty". Analogous to the "burned" coffee taste/smell a lot of older folks (habit, childhood memories) still enjoy.] Health: In the typical modern western diet (because of massive inclusion of industrial cheap plant sources) the ratio of Omega 3's/6's is way off like 20:1 and more in favor of 6's. Analogous to Vitamin A (Carotenoids/Retinol) the plant form of Omega 3 (ALA) is inefficiently converted[3] by humans (young women probably because of different needs (pregnancy) can utilize it a bit better than men) to a bioactive form, adding to the disbalance. We evolved to get a significant amount of Omega 3's from animal and marine (rivers/sea) sources (ultimately the primary bioreactors for easily convertible EPA/DHA being (marine) algea and phytoplankton). Maybe what hens get to eat could be seen as something very minor to consider. I actually would like it on the label (as an ingredients list for the sophisticated "bioreactor" maybe incl. the conditions like hours outside to produce Vitamin D, antibiotics given ...) that's why I'm more inclined if I am able to buy regionally to see for myself. In talks with farmers a lot of them - if they bother to engage in a conversation - are actually very knowledgeable and aware about this, as a city dweller just informing myself from books/studies I'm constantly impressed about their virtuosity. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski#Anecdotes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski#Anecdotes [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/ [2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00343-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00343-1 [3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Conversion_efficiency_of_ALA_to_EPA_and_DHA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Conversio...

intsunny 4y ago

When I moved to Germany five years ago, I was stunned at how intensely orange the yolks were compared to the USA. But now I've noticed the color has significantly mellowed out. Glad to know that this does not correlate with a decrease in quality.

hongloumeng 4y ago

Not too long ago in China, consumers preferred duck eggs with red tinted yolks. Market vendors would crack off the top half of an egg and display its yolk, and consumers thought the redder the better. So, of course, farmers started feeding a carcinogenic dye called Sudan Red directly to the ducks. * http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/189567.htm http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/189567.htm

solarist 4y ago
That’s a perfect example of Goodhart's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
ryanmercer 4y ago
Turmeric has had similar issues, with some individuals adding industrial lead chromate to improve the colors (and add to the weight, as it is sold by weight) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/28/turmeric-wellness-potion-moment-may-owe-its-yellow-color-lead-contamination-study-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/28/turmeric-...
- ineedasername 4y ago
  And if it was sold by volume they'd just be using some other type of filler. Outside of rigorous regulation it's hard to figure out how to fix this sort of thing. But then you end can also end up with massive factory farms or meat processing plants etc that can min/max the penalties against the profits, not to mention corrupt inspections.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Chinese markets strike me as absolutely brutal. I mean, there is always some theft, fraud etc. in any market (one of the oldest written records of humanity is a customer complaint about bad copper sold by a certain Mesopotamian merchant called Ea-nasir in 1750 BC), but stuff like poisoning your customers with Sudan Red, or adding melamine to yoghurt, or frying food on gutter oil seems to always be reported from China.

erk__ 4y ago

This also means that goose eggs are very yellow since their diet is nearly exclusively grass, at least when they are walking free.

poulpy123 4y ago

I wasn't aware that the red/orange leaves of autmns had their color due to caroten !

WithinReason 4y ago
This was my main takeaway :)

steeps 4y ago

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 https://nitter.net/kenjilopezalt/status/1176542696724320256

agumonkey 4y ago
Some french tv channel did a quick game test, asking a bunch of students to sip colored soda and guess the flavour. Green was mint, Red was strawberry, Yellow was citrus, they were all strawberry. Surprising "reality".
- bombcar 4y ago
  I’ve always wondered if part of the reason the “clear” craze for sodas died off is that you didn’t have the right signals to tell you what it tastes like.
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    What about canned soda? If drinking from a can it's pretty hard to see what color the soda is, without making a point of checking. I wonder if the can color is then the signal?
    - 0ldskool 4y ago
      color is probably associated with certain flavors. For most people our eyesight is used to identify things more so then other senses. If you don't see the color you probably have to work slightly harder to identify what is being eaten. How many people have a tongue so accurate they can eat/drink food blindfolded and identify it?
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The same thing is true about red and white wine. Color it all red and no one can tell the difference.

mintone 4y ago

A brand in the UK called Clarence Court started producing a range of eggs (maybe a decade ago?) that have an intensely orange yolk [1] and this became a real differentiator, in some ways an indicator of quality. I know when an egg is Clarence Court in a restaurant for instance (and have confirmed numerous times). They are also delicious eating. The effect is so profound that supermarket own brands have now also started producing similarly richly-orange-yolked eggs. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAe_TN_WsAAyQ9-.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAe_TN_WsAAyQ9-.jpg:large

bencollier49 4y ago
I noticed the supermarkets producing copycats and became suspicious of the method by which they achieved the colour. There's something qualitatively different about the darkened yolk in the Clarence Court eggs, and it makes me wonder about additives, I guess they're just adding caretinoids to the feed.
- andrewnicolalde 4y ago
  Yes! I completely agree. The yolks of Clarence Court-alikes just don’t feel as “rich”, whatever that means, and I can readily tell the difference when having yolk-heavy food like egg soldiers, for example.
  - bencollier49 4y ago
    English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class. :-) Speaking as one of them!
    - traceroute66 4y ago
      > English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class Put the Daily Mail down right this instant !
    - yaseer 4y ago
      "I can readily tell the difference between Clarence court eggs and copycats..." is an extract from 'Middle Class British Problems' if ever I heard one! :)

tacticaldev 4y ago

Just another example of how Organic (clean food) propaganda isn't based in science. I can't tell you how often I hear cooks swear by their redish, darkwe yolk eggs for having some kind of magic properties. Interesting article, good read.

throwamon 4y ago
Not disagreeing that there's plenty of propaganda and bad science out there, but I'm not sure why you chose to single out "organic propaganda". The article talks about the industry artificially adding substances to the yolk, which afaik is precisely what organic food people are against. Also, carotenoids may not be magic, but it's important to consume them.
tomxor 4y ago
> I can't tell you how often I hear cooks swear by their redish, darkwe yolk eggs for having some kind of magic properties. To complicate matters, psychology can play a significant role in the material result when making things. It's like the placebo effect but for the engineer, the cook, the mechanic, the designer etc. Obviously cooking is about more than the ingredients, they are important, but timing and intuition play a big role, the latter can be undermined if they start without believing in the ingredients... this applies to programming just as much as cooking.
nemo44x 4y ago
I’d probably use the term “marketing” rather than “propaganda”.

guerby 4y ago

What I've Learned did a video on eggs in Japan (where eggs are differentiated depending on feed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjrxXC3kGf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjrxXC3kGf4 "The #1 Egg consumer is Japan. Here's why. ($70 vs $1 Egg)"

Enginerrrd 4y ago
This was a nice little side tangent. Thanks for sharing.

riffraff 4y ago

Extra bit of trivia: the article mentions that southern Europe prefers darker orange, and indeed it's not uncommon in Italian to hear the egg be divided in "bianco e rosso" (White and red). In recent years it seems the yellow color has become more common though.

carlob 4y ago
I have seen eggs marketed specifically for pasta making which were darker orange to guarantee yellower pasta.
cinntaile 4y ago
Their fanta is a darker orange too!

dzhiurgis 4y ago

I'm a sucker for premium orange yolk eggs. My partner is sucker for buying eggs from a guy who grows them in his backyard. Sometimes, especially when making creamy scrambled eggs I can almost taste fishy or shellfish flavour (not something I like). We are based in NZ and I've heard people use sea shells as a source of calcium for hens, but I find hard to believe that it could be it.

ryanmercer 4y ago
The "fishy" taste is likely indicative of a higher omega 3 content, you get the same taste from 100% grass fed and finished beef and buffalo due to the higher omega 3 content.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  Omega-3 doesn't taste like fish unless it's literally fish oil, which is often an additive to improve the 3-6 ratio of foods. Flax seed doesn't taste like fish... Grass fed beef tasting "fishy"? I've never experienced that and can't imagine how it would work.
  - geitir 4y ago
    In my experience cheaper grass fed beef in the US commonly tastes gamey which can be interpreted as fishy. More expensive grass fed doesn't have this problem, so it likely has to do with diet or the cut.
    - robocat 4y ago
      The difference could also be due to how long the beef is hung or aged. Beef tasting too “gamey” might not be hung long enough (suggestion made last night by small farmer friends, fwiw).
  - 0ldskool 4y ago
    i guess it depends on what type of fish you eat. I often eat relatively fresh salmon. I wouldn't say it tastes fishy even though its fish. It tasty oily, so much oil comes out in the baking process.

glandium 4y ago

Similar answer to the question "why is salmon pink/orange?".

TecoAndJix 4y ago

I got five chickens last year and now have more eggs then I know what to do with (so we give a lot away). Everyone that has them says they are so much better and I have wondered if that is just due to them being able to see the chickens and their home. It is near impossible to hard boil the eggs they lay because the “membrane” (layer between the shell and egg-stuff) is so thick. The yolk is a darker yellow as well. I feed them mid-priced crumbles from tractor supply and give them scraps maybe once per week.

mpalczewski 4y ago
I finally found a full proof way of making any egg easy to peel. I wonder if it would work with eggs like these. I pressure steam then in an instant pot for about three minutes.
yostrovs 4y ago
Keep the fresh eggs on the counter for a week or so before boiling, and your shell will come off properly.
- caymanjim 4y ago
  If you do this, it's vital that you do not wash the bloom off. Once you wash eggs you have to refrigerate them.
  - hammock 4y ago
    No one does that except the egg processors
    - caymanjim 4y ago
      I've seen many amateurs do it. There's been a big uptick over the past decade of people raising chickens in their back yards without having any experience or guidance. Not that you need a lot; just important to do some research.
    - Kerrick 4y ago

sethammons 4y ago

I don't know. I raise chickens. The only difference I've been able to determine between darker and lighter yolks are the age of the eggs. Same food for all the birds. If we don't go through the eggs fast enough, they go from orange to yellow. I'm not saying you can't fake it with additives, but the post must be missing something.

Enginerrrd 4y ago
This is totally correct in my experience also raising chickens. Although, the old eggs from our chickens never got to be as colorless as the store bought.
beowulfey 4y ago
Oxidation maybe? It would probably lead to color loss as carotenoids age. Would cause the yolks to eventually fade. I just googled -- eggshells increase in permeability to oxygen after the first week, so my guess is this is what you are seeing!

locallost 4y ago

Color is very important for food. My favorite story is the one [1] with wine tasting, where the same white wine was tasted twice by the same people, in one case with tasteless red color added. The taste was reported to be completely different. While it might be contributed to wine tasting being total BS, my favorite part of this study was that its author became a wine maker :-). [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...

phonypc 4y ago
The color of food and drink certainly has suggestive power, but the popular conception of what that wine study shows, i.e. that wine tasting is complete junk, is itself complete junk. A reddit comment summarizes it best: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4q6485/til_a_scientist_invited_wine_experts_to_give/d4qrhna/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4q6485/til_a...
- locallost 4y ago
  I never said wine tasting was junk, but there is plenty of baloney in the reddit post. The worst part is the claim the author is not a scientist, merely an academic doing a study. Was his white coat missing? He did not attend Science University? I also posted that the author is a wine maker, so it's clear he doesn't view the wine world as junk. My take away from it is that there's a lot going on in our head based on the input from the senses, that things are not black and white, and that it's difficult to rate things objectively because of it. And that this is completely fine, since we are humans and not machines, and if you can taste black currants in a wine and this makes you happy, knock yourself out.

wirthjason 4y ago

I generally could care less about the color of an egg yolk but there’s one exception: the egg in ramen. It’s not that it tastes particularly better, marinating anything in soy sauce for a couple days will make it taste delicious. It’s often said we eat first with our eyes. I enjoy the contrast of colors. The dark red/orange looks much more appealing than a pale yellow yolk floating in a bowl of soup.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

Why do all the images in this article have wrong/fake EXIF? (Well, not all; it looks like that they copied the EXIF of the first image (which has the matching EXIF Image description of "Egg yolk in wooden spoon on eggs. Close up.", together with all the other camera/lens info) to all the other images for some reason. Nothing serious, but weird practice nevertheless.)

aendruk 4y ago
I’m curious to learn how you ran across this. A browser extension that surfaces the data? Or do you regularly go around downloading and inspecting images as you read?
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  Yeah, I use an extension [1] that shows EXIF data on hover. Very handy. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-quickview/kjihpkahhpobojbdnknpelpgmcihnepj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-quickview/kji... (there are lots more advanced ones on Chrome store / AMO, but this works for me.)
b0ner_t0ner 4y ago
My guess is the intern who saved the photos wanted to make them the same dimensions copy and pasted all subsequent photos onto/from the first photo exporting from that; that's why the captions are the same for the rest of the photos. Edit: and also notice the file names as in-article-eggyolks#.jpg which confirms my theory somebody saving over the original photo.

greggeter 4y ago

guilhas 4y ago

Quality of the food and treatment of the animal? Generally home grown chickens are more colored than supermarket

admeyer 4y ago

We get a lot of eggs from our neighbors and other local egg producers who put a lot of effort into raising healthy chickens. In addition to a deep-colored yolk I like to see how tall the yolk sits in the pan. For freshness, you might see thin, white ropes trailing from the yolk called chalazae.

0des 4y ago

chitin from bugs.

jonathanlydall 4y ago

I live in South Africa and the yolks of the eggs my wife and I buy are absolutely not nearly white. It may differ by supermarket though, I generally shop at Woolworths which markets itself as having the best quality food, while also charging extra as a result. Otherwise, perhaps it's only something which tends to occur with chickens grown by people for themselves in rural areas?

hbarka 4y ago

While we’re at it, can we also talk about the use of glyphosate aka RoundUp in our farms? It’s routinely used before and after a harvest in order to accelerate desiccation and allow the farmers to have multiple yields in a single season. Dyeing egg yolks and dying organs from RoundUp what have we become. [1] https://investigatemidwest.org/2019/05/26/controversial-pesticide-use-sees-dramatic-increase-across-the-midwest/amp/ https://investigatemidwest.org/2019/05/26/controversial-pest... [2] https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-use-desiccant-doubles-human-contamination/ https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-use-desiccant-...

cpr 4y ago

Growing up as a 'white bread' kid in the 60's and 70's, I had never had a farm fresh egg, nor local hand-made bacon. So you can imagine my delight when, exactly 40 years ago today on our honeymoon, we stayed with some friends of my parents on the Maine coast (Brooklin, in Penobscot Bay, on a little inlet called Herrick's Bay -- just visited there again last week) and they provided fresh local eggs and bacon for our breakfasts. It was truly ambrosial! (Of course, being in the first days of our honeymoon, in a romantic little converted boathouse out over the water might also have had something to do with it.) But I can attest that fresh eggs are night and day compared to store bought. (Of course, we're spoiled now, getting our eggs from friends who raise free-range chickens, so fresh eggs are just table stakes.)

Sebguer 4y ago
I'd think you'd only get table steaks if your friends also had cows. On a serious note, it's kind of wild how horrible modern chickens are. Great twitter thread I saw yesterday: https://twitter.com/MrSollozzo/status/1515324097223225345 https://twitter.com/MrSollozzo/status/1515324097223225345

partiallypro 4y ago

You can feed chickens red pepper flakes and their yolk will become darker and more orange in hue. Has no effect on taste, it's just for looks.

racl101 4y ago

As long as the egg doesn't float when i put it in water, I'm good.

plasticchris 4y ago

Feeding the chickens dyes can make the yolk any color you want, they used to do it as a demo for chicken feed sales by making the yolks all different colors.