Brown or white?
Free-range or organic?
Selecting eggs at the grocery store may sometimes leave you scratching your head.
So which eggs are best for your health?
“Despite the latest research and the 2020 Dietary Guidelines giving eggs a green light in healthy eating, conflicting info still swirls in the media and online,” said Jess DeGore, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based registered dietitian and owner of DietitianJess.com.
“With claims and confusion surrounding various types, choosing the right egg can be a challenge for consumers who are seeking optimal health benefits,” she also said.
Or, as registered dietitian nutritionist Bethany Thayer cleverly put it, “Scrambled information about eggs may have you wondering what shell to crack” to support your health.
Read on for the health scoop on all things eggs — with input from experts.
“Some people are under the impression that eggs with brown shells are nutritionally superior to those with white shells. This is not true,” said Thayer, who is also the director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan.
“The color of the shell comes from the color of the hen.”
“Hens with brown feathers and brown earlobes produce brown eggs and hens with white feathers and white earlobes produce eggs with white shells,” she said, stressing there is no nutritional difference between the two.
You may be wondering what these terms on egg cartons have to do with eggs’ health properties, too.
Thayer refers to these terms as a “marketing tool” and said they don’t necessarily impact the nutrition specs of the eggs.
You may be wondering what these terms on egg cartons have to do with eggs’ health properties, too.
“Cage-free means the hens live in an open barn with bedding material, perches and nest boxes to lay their eggs — while free-range is a term used to indicate that the hen has continuous, free access to the out-of-doors for over 51% of the animals’ lives — but [that] does not ensure that the animal actually went outdoors,” said Thayer.
DeGore of Pittsburgh noted that terms such as “free-range” are not regulated, so there’s not a specified amount of time or type of outdoor setting that qualifies as free range.
“Some studies show that the microbiota (gut bacteria) differs between free-range and caged eggs,” said DeGore.
“Other studies have shown that free-range eggs also have a higher concentration of healthy fats and lower amounts of saturated fat.”
As for organic?
Last but not least, “organic means that the hen was raised uncaged and was free to roam as well as fed [with] organic feed,” said Thayer.
Echoing Thayer’s comments, DeGore shared that organic labels indicate that the hen’s food was grown without synthetic chemicals, antibiotics and growth hormones.