Some more info
The yolk color is a marketing gimmick, Marketing the Perfectly Colored Egg Yolk - Modern Farmer. I agree the farm fresh eggs are superior to the factory eggs. If you fry a factory egg sunny side up its yolk is usually pretty flat which I think implies a stale egg.
My brother had two chickens (+1 ornery turkey, given away shortly afterwards) wandering his backyard for about 18 months. Three eggs a day! Fantastic stuff, but they crapped everywhere you didn’t want them to (patio table & chairs). He had more than enough eggs for a family of four with a busy schedule. The cost was cheap for feed, and he built his coop from free wood and screening.
The difference between fresh eggs and factory/grocery store eggs is night and day. You just have to put up with a lot of chicken poop to get them!
I would have to agree that “most” beef is grass fed and grain finished.
I just don’t buy that yolk color is not directly related to flavor quality. [Although in fairness that may not have been what you were saying] I also immediately distrust that article for using the word “hipster” in the second sentence. Typically IME when an article throws hipster at you right away it means the author is going to try to decry something pleasant in a fit of faux populism. Also, nothing in that article says that eggs with more richly colored yolks don’t actually taste better. The closest it gets is to suggest that there are regional preferences, and even that explanation is inadequate and doesn’t get at the “why” of the thing.
In any case, it would require blind tasting to know for certain. However, we “eat” with our eyes too, and that rich color is far more satisfying than the limpid pale yellow that greets from supermarket eggs. I’ve also found that supermarket yolks, even if the dates denote relative freshness, break more easily than farm-fresh eggs (whose yolks also break more easily as they age, but seem to take longer to degrade). Overall, I opt at least for cage-free, knowing it isn’t much better, but I get eggs from my aunt’s farm whenever possible. I find that orange-yellow, rich color very reassuring.
Look at the article Matt linked to.
I did. The consensus stated at the end of the article was that half of the tasters found the products to be similar while the other half unanimously preferred the farm eggs. This is no surprise. Many people don’t care much about these kind of distinctions. Others do. Apparently those who do like the farm eggs while those who don’t are indifferent. If anything that article strengthened my suspicions.
Also funny that this discussion is in the beef topic!
WRT beef, I like both grass fed and corn-finished, but agree that they are essentially different. For price and availability (despite a very low beef intake overall) I end up eating grain-finished more often than grass-fed.
Are you sure you got to the end of the article?
You are correct, I had not read past the picture, thinking it was the end of the article. That said, I still feel confident that the farm eggs are best.
Again, this is still ignoring the other half (or more) of the argument for both healthier eating and environmentally conscious food production.
Also why is connoisseurship always under attack like this? Let people enjoy what they enjoy. Do we need to discuss the studies that show that “experts” can’t taste the difference between wines to bring this a little closer to home?
From the National Corn Growers Association:
http://www.ncga.com/uploads/useruploads/corn-fedgrass-fedbeef.pdf
I don’t see anything other than a challenge to yolk colour being a good indicator of quality. Fwiw I eat eggs or beef under a dozen times a year. My only issue is more akin to saying the darker colour the wine the better. Of course if you are going to eat eggs it’s better to buy those that have good animal welfare standards.
I know this crazy guy that is finishing Black Wagyu Cows exclusively on rice, barley and the beer made from them.
You know a lot of weird guys
Ahh, the power of blind tasting.
I was in a new wine bar in San Francisco last summer, talking with the owner and trying to sell him on my wines. I found out he used to be a salesman for Veuve Clicquot in the US. I brought up a subject that has always bugged the shit out of me. Why does Veuve call their NV Champagne the Yellow Label when it’s clearly orange? He told me it’s related to the color of egg yolks in France. In France, they refer to the egg yolk as le jaune d’oeuf, which translates to the yellow of egg. The free range chickens in France lay eggs with yolks that are orange, not yellow. Veuve Clicquot’s label is definitely orange, and they called it jaune, after the egg yolks. The word for yellow in French is also jaune, so a faux ami (false friend = bad translation) became Yellow Label, for their English speaking customers. Btw, orange in English is also orange in French. Confusing? Maybe.
Like yaacov said , it is corn FINISHED. Cows on a corn diet will eventually die given a greater proportion of intake. They spend most of their time eating a mix of grains, grass, and sileage (fermented grains and biomass).
The corn fed phrase really annoys. Its far more important to raise a good cow.
Not to engage in thread drift (cough, cough) but does anyone know where it’s possible to source chicken fed on table scraps rather than feed? I’m not talking about that silly project where chickens were fed table scraps from 4 star restaurants but just vegetable peelings, etc.