[HN Gopher] Why are some egg yolks so orange?
___________________________________________________________________
Why are some egg yolks so orange?
Author : azizsaya
Score : 242 points
Date : 2022-04-17 08:55 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foodunfolded.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foodunfolded.com)
| guerby wrote:
| 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
|
| "The #1 Egg consumer is Japan. Here's why. ($70 vs $1 Egg)"
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| This was a nice little side tangent. Thanks for sharing.
| 0des wrote:
| chitin from bugs.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I have seen eggs marketed specifically for pasta making which
| were darker orange to guarantee yellower pasta.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Their fanta is a darker orange too!
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| Eggcellent, what a cracking article!
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| 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?
| Jaruzel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's Eggstreme @Jaruzel. Humankind would still be living in
| caves without your public service.
| arkj wrote:
| >> 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?
| tekknik wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| 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.
| blamazon wrote:
| We all know how to read, but do we all know how to click?
| scns wrote:
| Cognitive dissonance. Believed i didn't have it, i was wrong
| em500 wrote:
| 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_N
| A/products/carotenoids/carophyll...)
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| 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.)
| b0ner_t0ner wrote:
| 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.
| aendruk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, I use an extension [1] that shows EXIF data on hover.
| Very handy.
|
| [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-
| quickview/kji... (there are lots more advanced ones on Chrome
| store / AMO, but this works for me.)
| xd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's because store bought eggs are not fresh.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| madaxe_again wrote:
| 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.
| mcculley wrote:
| Do you have a citation for this? I find this to be
| surprising given that I have heard the exact opposite: That
| efficient supply chains lead to eggs too fresh to easily
| deshell when hard boiled.
|
| When I had my own hens I would deliberately age the eggs I
| intended to hard boil.
| em500 wrote:
| I'm similarly skeptical. Both the demand and supply for
| eggs are probably quite predictable (save for the
| occasional bird flu outbreak), so why would the industry
| create big egg buffers/stockpiles?
| OJFord wrote:
| Wow, 6 _months_?! Why? Supply is pretty continuous, can
| keep them pretty much anywhere (even if there was just one
| county in one state suitable for rearing hens.. you could
| _post_ them to any other faster than that?), what
| introduces such delay?
| Tagbert wrote:
| I am skeptical of that statement. It would be 6 times
| longer than the legally allowed time, for one thing.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Price stability requires a stockpile - there are egg
| warehouses dotted around the US, and they exist pretty
| much solely to ensure a regular supply and therefore
| predictable price of a very fundamental foodstuff.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I always think how come eggs can stay so fresh so long? Is
| there any other "whole" protein that stays fresh so long?
| verve_rat wrote:
| When you are trying to have babies, having them go off is
| a bit counter productive.
| phyzome wrote:
| I suspect eggs just have a bunch of antibacterial
| compounds in the membrane and albumin.
| tssva wrote:
| By law in the US farmers have up to 30 days to package eggs
| and then the eggs have to be sold within another 30 days,
| so the oldest eggs on the grocery shelf can be is 60 days.
| Most eggs are packaged and in a store for sale shortly
| after being laid.
| thom wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| robga wrote:
| EU legislation is that best before dates are at most 28
| days from date of lay. Has the UK changed its law after
| Brexit? Not to my knowledge.
|
| Red Lion stamped eggs still advertise the 28 day best
| before date. "For Lion eggs this must be shown on the shell
| (although this is not a legal requirement). Eggs have to be
| collected from farms at least twice a week and in practice
| most Lion eggs are delivered to the supermarket within 48
| hours of being laid."
| [deleted]
| euroderf wrote:
| As a kid I raised chickens and in the morning I could wait in
| the coop for an egg to drop. This egg always stood up in the
| pan. All fresh eggs stand up. The whites in store-bought eggs
| tend to be watery and spread out quickly, indicating that
| they've been sitting outside the chicken for an extended
| period.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| 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.
| zhte415 wrote:
| Give fresh eggs a couple of days to a week to mellow. The
| flavour of a just-layed egg from a backyard chicken with a rich
| diet can be pretty intense.
| refurb wrote:
| Why would you be surprised? Why throw out scrap fish and
| seafood when you could sell it as chicken feed?
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| I believe it's the choline. It tastes fishy and eggs have a
| very large content of it.
|
| I don't know that backyard eggs would have more of it but the
| slight fishy taste in eggs is (and liver) is due to it.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > 100% grass fed and finished beef
|
| I am not sure this is true. I live in a country (NZ) where
| most cattle are grass fed their entire lives. This is
| supposed to mean higher omega 3 content but I have never
| tasted a fishy taste. Not even once.
|
| If grass fed and fishy taste are corrolated, I suspect there
| is another cause. Maybe organic fish containing grass
| fertiliser?
| walterlb wrote:
| We just started smelling/tasting some fishy flavor with eggs
| from one of our hens. We suspected flaxseed in the feed we
| were giving, and switching feeds seems to have fixed it.
|
| Brown egg layers are apparently more prone to this issue
| DiffEq wrote:
| This will happen if you feed your chickens salmon or other
| fish. I have chickens and yes I occasionally my sons or wife
| will feed them left overs and it may be some salmon skin we did
| not eat, some fish bones and heads that we did not eat, etc.
| When we do this the eggs take on that taste. I don't like it
| either and if it does happen then I feed those eggs to the
| dog....
| igetspam wrote:
| You should give them back to the hens. They prefer them fresh
| but they'll eat them cooked too. Producing an egg takes a lot
| of nutrients. They'll any that crack, to help replenish.
| They'll eventually eat the shells too, which helps with their
| digestion.
| margalabargala wrote:
| This is a good way to teach hens that "eggs are food" and
| they may start eating their own eggs before you can get to
| them.
| igetspam wrote:
| I have not had that experience. None of my current hens,
| or the dozens I've had, will eat them unless they're
| cracked. I toss them eggs every day and of the egg
| bounces without breaking, they will tap it with their
| beak and then leave it be. I know it can happen but I've
| not had it happen in the four or five years I've been
| keeping chickens. Although we wouldn't mind. We have them
| as pets and don't eat many of the eggs.
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| 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.
| yostrovs wrote:
| Keep the fresh eggs on the counter for a week or so before
| boiling, and your shell will come off properly.
| igetspam wrote:
| We keep ours in a skelter and I boil a dozen of so when it
| starts to overflow. This has been my experience as well.
|
| I have 17 chickens, 16 of them are hens. I get 9-12 a day and
| my neighbors love me because we don't eat them. The yolks are
| big and deep orange/yellow and people seem to love them. I
| have y purchased an egg in a few years so I have no frame of
| reference any more. They're free range and they eat
| everything they can find (snakes, frogs, lizards, bugs,
| plants) and all the feed and scratch I feed them.
| caymanjim wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No one does that except the egg processors
| caymanjim wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| For particularly messy eggs I'll do it right before
| cracking them. But they stay dirty until it's time to
| cook.
| goda90 wrote:
| If you're at all interested in storing eggs long term, look up
| "water glassing". It needs to be done with freshly laid eggs,
| but the eggs are still edible months later.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| 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.
| urthor wrote:
| https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=B...
|
| Research says that the nutritional value is not significantly
| different between organic and backyard.
|
| However, I expect the fact the backyard eggs are fresh laid is
| the big differentiator. The supply chain between farm and
| supermarket is huge, whilst backyard eggs can be laid that day.
| simonsarris wrote:
| What research are you talking about? I've found the opposite:
| https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1487156557146210306?t.
| ..
| bombcar wrote:
| Free Range is not the same as organic - if you compare
| backyard eggs to eggs that are basically someone else's
| backyard it's understandable there's little difference.
|
| Free range just means the chicken can go outside or turn
| around. It says nothing about the feed or breed.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| In the US farmers have 28 days to get eggs in cartons. Once
| in cartoons eggs must be sold in 30 days. Store eggs can be
| quite old. Freshness is likely a big part of flavor. I
| suspect that the US egg washing method may affect flavor as
| well. Home eggs typically aren't washed and are only a few
| days old. The eggs I sell were laid that week.
| wincy wrote:
| My friend had some eggs from his chickens in his backyard and I
| was surprised I didn't like them as much as the Happy Egg Co.
| Heritage Breed eggs I buy at Sprouts. The eggs are $8 a dozen
| and the only eggs I'll eat now. Everything else tastes off.
| Maybe the flavor is from the breed of chicken? The eggs are
| brown and blue.
|
| They definitely have the same hard boiling issue with a strong
| membrane.
|
| I want it to be placebo as these eggs are expensive and I spend
| a few hundred a month on them. But I've bought every expensive
| brand of egg I can (Vital Farms, among others, which _used_ to
| taste amazing then became popular maybe and tasted like any
| other egg?) and _only_ this brand tastes different than a bog
| standard cheap egg.
|
| The same thing happened with Kerrygold butter. Regular cheap
| butter tastes like I'm eating Crisco now.
| tayo42 wrote:
| how are you eating these eggs?
| twic wrote:
| > The eggs are $8 a dozen [...] and I spend a few hundred a
| month on them
|
| You eat over 300 eggs a month?
| TheSoftwareGuy wrote:
| It's not that crazy the more I think about it. If he has a
| spouse and 2 kids (so 4 people in this house), and each
| person eats 3 eggs for breakfast everyday for 30 days
| that's 360 eggs
| ipaddr wrote:
| That could become a health issue if this is longterm.
| smilliken wrote:
| If you have a reason to think eggs are unhealthy, state
| the reason so that there can be a discussion. Eggs are as
| close to a miracle food that I know, and I think it would
| be a shame to discourage their consumption.
| mikehotel wrote:
| The USDA prohibits eggs from being called safe or
| nutritious because of their cholesterol and saturated fat
| content.
|
| Video and transcript expanding on this available at
| https://nutritionfacts.org/video/who-says-eggs-arent-
| healthy....
| wrycoder wrote:
| Personally, I would not pay any attention to that
| whatsoever.
| datguacdoh wrote:
| also other cultures eat many savory egg dishes as well
| that makes egg use outside of breakfast quite common. my
| family of 4 goes through about that many eggs because of
| many lunch and dinner egg dishes we eat. I've been
| personally shocked by how many eggs we go through a week,
| but buying flats at local farmers markets has helped
| quite a bit.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > 3 eggs for breakfast everyday
|
| Ugh! I would start to crow if I would eat that much.
| TinyRick wrote:
| You buy 25 dozen eggs per month? How are you spending a few
| hundred a month on eggs even if they're $8/dozen
| wincy wrote:
| Okay maybe 12 dozen. But my family eats a lot of eggs!
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Dude get some chickens. My cost per dozen is around $3 at
| current feed prices and 60% laying rate. If you feed them
| your kitchen scraps the feed cost is even lower.
|
| The eggs you get that dont peel well are fresh. Less than 2
| weeks old. Home grown eggs are the same way until they age
| and dry out a bit.
| ipaddr wrote:
| How long do they keep producing eggs and what do you do
| with the chickens after?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| They will keep producing their whole life. However,
| production drops way off after 3 years. My wife isn't
| keen on butchering or I would make soup with old hens. I
| have some freeloading birds right now that will get to
| live out their life while only giving me manure and an
| occasional egg. When they die they become compost.
|
| I do keep dual purpose birds in the event that food
| supplies require a sacrifice to feed my family. It costs
| a little more to feed heavier hens but the security is
| worth it.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Kenji covered hard boiling eggs with scientific rigor:
| https://www.seriouseats.com/the-secrets-to-peeling-hard-boil...
|
| We have backyard chickens and hard-boil a lot of eggs. The
| biggest effect on peel-ability: Start with boiling water, do
| _not_ start the eggs in cold water.
|
| For years I started with cold water because that's what Alton
| Brown said to do in Good Eats. And for years the eggs were a
| pain to peel. When I read Kenji's article, I switched, and
| immediately eggs became much easier to peel. Night and day.
|
| No other factor comes close in terms of effect. Not age, not
| backyard vs store bought. Not the breed (at least, not for any
| of the dozen chicken breeds we have had). Start with boiling
| water and 9/10 eggs peel nicely, start with cold water and 9/10
| eggs peel terribly.
| lazyant wrote:
| Add salt and they peel fine (they say vinegar too but I
| didn't find it so effective)
| saltcured wrote:
| I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I was told decades ago
| that starting with cold water was mostly based wanting to
| avoid scalded hands when placing the eggs into water or to
| avoid cracked shells from impact of the raw eggs with the pot
| or with each other.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| If that's the case, tongs are your friend.
| [deleted]
| zhynn wrote:
| I steam them to get consistent hot exterior temps. Plus it is
| easier to rinse them when they are in a steamer basket. And
| it uses less water. And the water is faster to boil.
|
| Totally agree with you on this though.
| foobiekr wrote:
| This is interesting to me because pressure cooker eggs start
| cold but after a few dozen batches, fresh eggs or old, I've
| never had a batch that was hard to peel. I do ice bath them
| though.
| jgerrish wrote:
| I've been stuck in Egg Hell for years, and old cookbooks and
| Good Eats (which is so great and engaging on so many other
| topics).
|
| And it was the Internet that just now added more votes for
| pre-boil and peel-ability.
|
| Cool Internet, Cool.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I think that, separate from any objective difference in
| "quality" of the eggs, seeing happy chickens is a perfectly
| fine reason to derive more enjoyment from consuming the eggs in
| question.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Do a blind taste test with store bought and home grown eggs.
| You will be able to tell. After years of eating home grown
| eggs, I nearly spit out store eggs when I had them. The texture
| and flavor is so bad it was an immediate involuntary response.
| Home eggs are velvety and rich in flavor. Store eggs tasted
| like bland rubber. I say the difference is as stark as
| comparing scrambled store eggs and reconstituted powdered eggs.
|
| My wife claimed there was no difference for a very long time.
| She had the same experience when we needed to buy store eggs
| last winter.
|
| Strangely, when going from store eggs to home eggs the
| difference isn't as pronounced.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| How do you square your results with actual blind tests that
| show no results? How confident are you that you actually
| controlled for things like color?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Did I sit down with a blindfold on and eat unknown eggs?
| No. I will eat anything that is food. I had every intention
| of eating the store eggs with no hesitation. I even ate
| them after taking pause at involuntary revulsion to the
| tasteless gelatinous mass I was chewing on. I grew up
| eating store eggs. Now I will avoid them when possible.
| person22 wrote:
| I have been raising pastured free range egg chicks for years.
| If I don't see the color of the yolk, I can't tell the
| difference between mine and store bought.
|
| Oddly enough, others can and cooks say the whites are much
| easier to whip.
| the_af wrote:
| Out of curiosity, did you do a blind test yourself?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Yes, when visiting friends and not knowing the provenance
| of their eggs until asking after putting eggs in my mouth.
| Kerrick wrote:
| Could that be down to your friends' skill at cooking eggs
| vs. your own?
| [deleted]
| vic-traill wrote:
| This is very true. Years ago we had chickens, and fresh eggs
| (laid over the past couple of days) were _impossible_ to peel
| the shell from after hard boiling.
|
| We started soft boiling, knocking the head off and using a
| small spoon to eat. It was either that or fried/scrambled.
|
| I never did find out how long a fresh egg would have to age in
| order to become peelable when hard boiled.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Soft boiled, take the tops off with a chef's knife on a
| butcher block.
|
| So long as the yolks are waxy, little mess. And it's fast and
| sweet.
| js2 wrote:
| I recently started using a pressure cooker (instant pot brand)
| to make hard cooked eggs. I use a 4 minute cooking time,
| instant release the pressure, then plunge the eggs right away
| into cold water to stop their cooking.
|
| Even fresh eggs peel perfectly.
| googlryas wrote:
| +1 to pressure cooker for a few mins + cold water bath. I
| tried all the tricks normally stated for hard boiling eggs,
| and always had half the eggs just refusing to come out of
| their shell. 100% of the time with my instant pot they just
| slip out of the shell.
| drost wrote:
| I poach eggs for breakfast in my InstantPot. 3 eggs for 5
| minutes on steam. I've found that eggs with orange yolks tend
| towards a jammy texture, but yellow yolks tend towards a
| drier texture.
| ncmncm wrote:
| When poaching eggs in water the usual way, a tablespoon of
| vinegar in the water keeps them together, not scattered all
| over the pan.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Thanks! I'm going to have to try that.
| js2 wrote:
| Hmm, seems serious eats doesn't agree, but I've tried
| everything over the years and the instant pot has worked
| best for me.
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/the-secrets-to-peeling-hard-
| boil...
| zwieback wrote:
| When we had chickens I made a lot of flan and meringues, also
| stuff like lemon curd. Anything to keep up with the flood of
| eggs.
| anonu wrote:
| > near impossible to hard boil the eggs they lay because the
| "membrane"
|
| I am curious about this. Is it maybe your boiling technique
| that is causing this hard membrane? Proteins toughen up if
| exposed to too much heat.
|
| I get my eggs up to room temperature and drop them into boiling
| water for 6.5 minutes at sea level. Then I remove the hot water
| immediately and let them cool. These eggs (no matter where they
| come from) are always easy to peel and never too tough.
| waihtis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
|
| [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/
|
| [2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00343-1
|
| [3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Conversio
| ...
| intsunny wrote:
| 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.
| admeyer wrote:
| 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.
| sethammons wrote:
| 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.
| beowulfey wrote:
| 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!
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| 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.
| locallost wrote:
| 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_infam...
| phonypc wrote:
| 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...
| locallost wrote:
| 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.
| greggeter wrote:
| hbarka wrote:
| 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-
| pest...
|
| [2] https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/10/glyphosate-use-
| desiccant-...
| partiallypro wrote:
| 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.
| hongloumeng wrote:
| 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
| solarist wrote:
| That's a perfect example of Goodhart's law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Not too long ago in China...
|
| And still happening in Europe and the United States today.
|
| Canthaxanthin is very commonly added to farmed Salmon, to
| change its natural colour from grey to pink. Known to cause eye
| diseases in humans, it is also linked to several types of
| cancer in humans, but not proven as a carcinogen.
|
| And though Europe has banned the Azo food colourings, they are
| still perfectly legal to add to food in the US. And though
| their effects are mostly on children, it is specifically
| childrens' foods and snacks to which these bright colours are
| added.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _Known to cause eye diseases in humans_
|
| ... when taken in massive doses as a skin-tanning supplement.
| As far as I know, there 's no evidence whatsoever of side-
| effects in humans when eaten in the quantities typical to
| those involved in produce like salmon/eggs.
| [deleted]
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Europe has banned the Azo food colourings
|
| Europe has indeed banned some Azo food colorings, however
| canthaxanthin is not one of them, as far as I am aware. The
| EU has evaluated the safety of it on multiple occasions and
| found it safe to consume at the levels used in the food
| supply.
|
| > Known to cause eye diseases in humans
|
| Extremely excessive intake of tanning pills containing
| canthaxanthin was shown to cause accumulation of deposits in
| the retinas of a small number of individuals. Once the intake
| of pills was stopped, the condition completely cleared up in
| all individuals effected.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ryanmercer wrote:
| 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-...
| ineedasername wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| wasn't the social credit system supposed to fix this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System (i mean it
| looks like a 'big brother' system, but it was introduced with
| the objective of fixing abuses like this)
| heftig wrote:
| Do corporations and other juridical persons also get a social
| credit score? This abuse was committed by a corp, not some
| farmer.
| woodruffw wrote:
| One of the "nice" things about China's one-party and
| nakedly authoritarian nature is that the corporate veil
| doesn't really exist: if the Chinese government one day
| decides that the CEO of a company deserves to have their
| social credit measured against some set of civic outcomes
| produced by their company, then there's nothing stopping
| them from doing so.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| The fake Chinese eggs were the high point for me
| joeman1000 wrote:
| Just read about those [1]. I was struck that the
| ingredients were similar to what's in Gaviscon:
|
| - Sodium alginate
|
| - Calcium carbonate
|
| [1]: https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/fake-chinese-
| eggs-are-...
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| You've got to admire the ingenuity
| azizsaya wrote:
| Same goes with India as well. I have always wondered about
| this, may be it is the trade-off between getting caught and
| the sheer desperation to make money that tilts the moral
| compass to act in unethical ways.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Interestingly the Germans also found some Sudan dies in
| spices imported from India. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/dyes_sudan_I_IV.pdf
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> and the sheer desperation to make money that tilts the
| moral compass
|
| A very western sentiment. We often deride the quest for
| profits, demonizing people who put profit ahead of
| something more noble like safety. But in places like China
| "profit" is life. China has seen starvation in living
| memory. In countries without social safety nets a failed
| business likely means utter destitution, very often leading
| to physical violence. The people who run restaurants, and
| certainly the people who work in them, are not chasing
| profits because they want to drive nice cars. They are
| chasing profits because they too want to keep eating.
| sofixa wrote:
| But doesn't getting caught poisoning customers result in
| destitution too?
| xbmcuser wrote:
| China has moved from the 3rd world to the developed world in
| just 30 years. Their laws and social development have yet to
| catch up with their economic development. Most of the people
| in any kind of power position are in their 50s-60s ie those
| that grew up in a very harsh world. It will take another
| 20~30 years for it to change.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I guess it was quite a long time ago now but https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/1985_diethylene_glycol_wine_sc...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Wild. I was a kid in 1985, so not interested in wine yet,
| though Austria is right next door.
|
| There were several recent affairs in Europe with
| adulteration of suspect booze in the black (or gray) market
| with methylalcohol. That would fit right in.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Not just Chinese markets, but Chinese products today, such as
| the cat food and melamine issue, and baby formula. Consumable
| Chinese products should have a warning label
| gordaco wrote:
| This used to be common in parts of Europe as well. There is a
| book called _From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee--The
| Dark History of the Food Cheats_ , from the food journalist
| Bee Wilson [1], which tells (among many other things) a lot
| of stories about arsenic poisonings in 19th century London,
| caused by the usage of certain red dyes in food. The saying
| that certain regulations are written in blood comes from
| these kinds of stories.
|
| [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2507738.Swindled
| unsignedchar wrote:
| Yes there was an extract in NYT comparting the issues with
| baby formula in 2008 China with 1850s New York
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30wilson.html
| gbear605 wrote:
| A lot of this was common in the US and Europe a hundred years
| ago, but laws and changing culture have stopped it. Just look
| at snake oil, or the many other "remedies". See, eg, " Down
| and Out in Paris and London" by Orwell, where among many
| other things he talks about how the restaurant kitchens in
| early 1900s Paris were extremely gross and dangerous, but
| because the front of the restaurants were clean, the
| customers seemed happy.
|
| "A customer orders, for example, a piece of toast. Somebody,
| pressed with work in a cellar deep underground, has to
| prepare it. How can he stop and say to himself, 'This toast
| is to be eaten--I must make it eatable'? All he knows is that
| it must look right and must be ready in three minutes. Some
| large drops of sweat fall from his forehead on to the toast.
| Why should he worry? Presently the toast falls among the
| filthy sawdust on the floor. Why trouble to make a new piece?
| It is much quicker to wipe the sawdust off. On the way
| upstairs the toast falls again, butter side down. Another
| wipe is all it needs. And so with everything."
|
| China is at an interesting point because they've developed
| economically so much in the last fifty years. Their culture
| and law enforcement hasn't caught up yet while the internet
| has, so this is shared with us.
| elefanten wrote:
| And yet none of those examples compare to consciously using
| known poisons as a replacement for or additive to real
| food. That's cynical brutality on another level.
| kixiQu wrote:
| How about preserving milk with formaldehyde?
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-
| squ... https://allthatsinteresting.com/poison-squad-
| harvey-wiley
|
| One of the tricks here is that "known" poisons are the
| same as "agreed-upon" poisons -- or that the definition
| of "poison" isn't as clear as you might assume.
|
| If one compares the US/Canada and EU restrictions of
| additives with the assumption that the latter are
| _founded,_ you 'd come to the conclusion that the only
| thing North America must have more of than cynical
| brutality is cancer. However, while I'm not going to say
| they're right, there are typically plenty of folks in HN
| comment sections happy to say that many of the EU's food
| restrictions are ascientific pandering.
|
| Everyone has _some_ intuitive threshold about what they
| 'd consider reasonable and what they wouldn't, but they
| don't always align. Acrylamide from roasting coffee?
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-judge-
| rules-... Nitrates and nitrites are indisputably
| poisonous as hell, so are cured meats out of bounds?
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34615621
| robocat wrote:
| > formaldehyde
|
| As a metabolic intermediate, formaldehyde is present at
| low levels in most living organisms. Formaldehyde can be
| found naturally in food up to the levels of 300 to 400
| mg/kg, including fruits and vegetables (e.g. pear, apple,
| green onion), meats, fish, crustacean and dried mushroom,
| etc.
|
| Ingestion of a small amount of formaldehyde is unlikely
| to cause any acute effect. The main health concern of
| formaldehyde is its cancer causing potential. The
| International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
| considered that there was sufficient evidence for
| carcinogenicity in humans upon occupational exposure via
| inhalation. On the other hand, WHO in 2005 when setting
| its Drinking Water Guidelines considered that there was
| no definitive evidence for carcinogenicity upon
| ingestion.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Well, sure. Here's the thing: with _anything_ , the dose
| makes the poison -- and "low levels" and "small amount"
| are pretty important phrases in those claims, right? (htt
| ps://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/MMG/MMGDetails.aspx?mmgid=216&toxid
| ...) People aren't talking about the amounts in _apples_
| when they 're referring to e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Indonesia_food_scare
| code_duck wrote:
| I'm not sure much has changed in regard to the anecdote you
| shared. Kitchens are under a lot of pressure to get food
| out quickly and finish all of an order at the same time.
|
| I worked at a restaurant in the 90s as my very first job,
| and one day someone dropped a steak on the floor after it
| was done. I said oh dear, I'll get another from the fridge.
| The cooks told me no, just wash it off and serve it,
| reasoning "If we bring out every else's meal and they guy
| who ordered the steak has to wait 10 minutes, he'll be
| mad". My guess was that he would be angrier to know that he
| was served a steak that had been dropped on our filthy
| floor and given the choice, would probably prefer to wait
| for a different one.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| Your anecdote sparked an old thought for me.
|
| In your story, the customer would perceive the service as
| inferior if their food was late. A cook, knowing that the
| service isn't really inferior (there was just one little
| snag), justifies a little action to put appearances back
| closer to reality.
|
| That last sentence is a study for me. I see it in
| everybody including myself. Somehow we convince ourselves
| that our ideal is the normal and the actual reality is an
| aberation. Then we rationalize little efforts to hide the
| aberation.
|
| It can be hard to acknowledge the truth about ourselves
| and accept the consequences. But it is very hard to
| improve otherwise.
|
| (At the same time we need to be careful of imposing
| overly severe consequences for mistakes.)
| yojo wrote:
| My last boss worked at a sandwich shop in college
| (Pasadena, CA). One shift he knocked over a 5 gallon
| bucket of olives, which spilled all over the floor.
|
| He was mortified, but the owner seemed unperturbed. He
| handed him a broom and a dustpan and told him to get them
| all back in the bucket.
| oefrha wrote:
| > how the restaurant kitchens in early 1900s Paris were
| extremely gross and dangerous, but because the front of the
| restaurants were clean, the customers seemed happy.
|
| I heard a lot of restaurants in China these days, including
| takeout outlets, make live video feeds of their kitchens
| available online so that customers can be assured that the
| kitchens are hygienic. Of course that doesn't tell you
| about the quality of source materials.
| dflock wrote:
| Well, a video feed of _a_ kitchen, at least.
| rciorba wrote:
| I've ordered from such a place in Munich. The novelty
| factor made it entertaining to watch and at some point I
| could identify my order being prepared. Not sure how many
| people you could deceive before you start to get called
| out, if the feed was of a different kitchen
| [deleted]
| ndespres wrote:
| Well that might be a concerted effort to keep your attention
| turned away from all the similarly nasty things happening in
| your own country. In my country I think about older examples
| like the Swill Milk Scandal of the 1850s but more recent
| efforts like "ag-gag laws" that make it a crime to document
| the brutal conditions inside slaughterhouses and food
| processing facilities. This isn't just a "China" problem.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
| arcticbull wrote:
| > ... but stuff like poisoning your customers with Sudan Red
|
| I obviously am not in favor of using potentially carcinogenic
| dyes in foodstuffs, but in the case of the minute quantities
| of Sudan dies that would find their way into the eggs, I
| think "poisoning your customers" is a touch strong. Poisoning
| your ducks, maybe.
|
| Sudan dies are listed under Directive 67/548/EEC [1] as a
| Category III carcinogen. The description of that designation
| is: Substances which cause concern for man
| owing to possible carcinogenic effects but in respect of
| which available information is not adequate for making a
| satisfactory assessment. There is some evidence from
| appropriate animal studies, but this is insufficient to place
| the substance in Category II. [2, p.19]
|
| My understanding is the studies on Sudan dies showed
| potential carcinogenic activity in mice but not in rats. [3]
|
| When the Germans did a risk assessment on imports of certain
| spices from India with Sudan dies they said:
| The assessment that the risk of cancer is probably very low
| in the case of occasional consumption of foods with a low
| level does not, however, mean that there is no risk at all.
| [3]
|
| Again, probably still shouldn't eat, but I think a little
| perspective is healthy here too. You're not gonna die from
| having a couple of red eggs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_67/548/EEC
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/environment/archives/dansub/pdfs/ann
| ex6...
|
| [3] https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/dyes_sudan_I_IV.pdf
| komposit wrote:
| 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.
| erk__ wrote:
| This also means that goose eggs are very yellow since their diet
| is nearly exclusively grass, at least when they are walking free.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I wasn't aware that the red/orange leaves of autmns had their
| color due to caroten !
| WithinReason wrote:
| This was my main takeaway :)
| steeps wrote:
| J. Kenji Lopez-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
| agumonkey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| nanidin wrote:
| A food scientist came to my high school and did a similar
| demonstration with us - except with different flavors of
| koolaid. Students reported red as cherry, purple as grape ...
| but they were actually the same flavor and only differed in
| color.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The same thing is true about red and white wine. Color it all
| red and no one can tell the difference.
| [deleted]
| scoot wrote:
| I'm sorry, but that just isn't true. No doubt some wines
| cross over, but the tannins present in much red wine are
| notable by their absence from pretty much all white wine.
| fullstop wrote:
| Yes, this. Red and white don't taste that similar to me.
|
| My nose isn't great, especially compared to my wife's,
| but I could tell you 100% of the time if I was tasting
| red or white while blindfolded.
| aembleton wrote:
| Would you be able to tell if you weren't blindfolded and
| it was white wine that had food colouring added to it so
| that it appeared as red?
|
| Would your sense of taste overpower what your eyes were
| telling you?
| fullstop wrote:
| I absolutely could do this, even with food coloring.
| powersnail wrote:
| We did an experiment in class, where we drank sodas
| blindfolded. Not only did we fail to distinguish Coke Cola
| and Pepsi, we couldn't even tell sprite from coke!
|
| I would have never believed that they taste so incredibly
| similar without the experiment.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| But is that because of their past experience i.e. buying
| premium eggs vs cheap eggs before trained them into a bias?
| simsla wrote:
| It's not just colour acting as an equaliser, but people being
| unable to distinguish when you take yolk colour out of the
| equation entirely.
|
| From the linked thread:
|
| > "blindfolded tasters couldn't really tell the difference
| between fresh pastures backyard eggs and 2-week old
| supermarket eggs"
| px43 wrote:
| Who were the participants? Random people off the street, or
| professional tasters who actually pay attention to what
| they're eating?
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Hard to believe that discerning people exist!
|
| It's the same as the claims that no one knows they are
| sick for weeks before symptoms. If you're unhealthy and
| living with that, yeah, I guess you might not notice
| feeling off
| wirthjason wrote:
| For people into this kind of stuff check out "Taste: What
| You're Missing" from food scientist Barb Stucky.
|
| It's a pop science collection of stores about measuring tastes
| and food pleasure. I remember reading a chapter on texture and
| how one of the founders of Ben and Jerry's ice cram, Ben
| Chohen, doesn't have a sense of taste. When you can't taste
| anything food, ice cream in particular, becomes very boring
| after the first couple bites. So the sense of pleasure comes
| from different textures rather than different flavors. That's
| why B&J's ice cream has so many chunky ingredients.
|
| http://barbstuckey.com/the-shop/
| taneq wrote:
| Reminds me of the studies which show that wine connoisseurs are
| describing the colour, not the taste, of the wine. I've always
| found this highly suspect because I guarantee anyone who drinks
| wine regularly could fairly accurately judge what price bracket
| a wine came from, at least within a factor of 2-3. You could
| mistake a $10 wine for a $15 wine or vice versa but a $50 wine
| is noticeably different.
| fullstop wrote:
| I have had some excellent $10 bottles of wine which hold
| their own against the $50 bottles.
| robocat wrote:
| I suggest you organise this with your friends - it is a lot
| of fun and you can enjoy an adult science experiment.
|
| If you do want to try it, then two suggestions: 1. try to
| have some way to blind yourself from the results, 2. Make a
| decision whether you want everyone to get plastered or not.
|
| I did this a few years ago and it was heaps of fun, but I
| wasn't careful about amounts so we all got trolleyed by
| mistake.
| [deleted]
| jjeaff wrote:
| That is not in line with the blind taste tests I have seen.
| The vast majority of people not only can't pick out the more
| expensive wine, they also tend to prefer the cheaper wines.
| kuhewa wrote:
| There's a legitimate reason what one might hold that
| impression, although I'm not sure to what degree it is at play.
| A home grown chook that gets a lot of its diet from foraging
| insects and eating various scraps probably will have a more
| flavorful, _eggier_ egg and due to the carotenes in the diet
| the yolk will be redder.
|
| Of course, you can get the same orange yolk from adding
| caroteens to the feed of an industrially grown layer's feed
| with none of the associated other differences
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I mean, you can definitely tell the difference between, say, a
| mass-produced egg and one from a naturally raised chicken. The
| latter often has more orange-y yolks. That being said, some
| large-scale producers add stuff to the diet to get more orange
| yolks and some naturally raised eggs aren't super orange so
| yes, colour alone doesn't mean much.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It's almost as if you did not read the article, especially
| the last two sentences.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Almost like I was responding to a comment, not the article
| itself... That's why there's levels to comments.
| mintone wrote:
| 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
| Bluecobra wrote:
| In the US there is a brand called Happy Egg with a dark orange
| yolk. They are my preferred brand now, because who wants to buy
| unhappy eggs? They are the only one I can find with dark orange
| yolk.
| wincy wrote:
| Happy Egg Co. eggs are my favorite! So much so that I emailed
| them during the early pandemic thanking them for making such
| amazing eggs.
|
| Have you tried the Heritage breed and their other lines of
| eggs? I've found the cheaper eggs have the same dark orange
| yolk but the flavor of the Heritage breed eggs is absolutely
| divine. It's ruined other eggs for me.
|
| Interestingly Vital Farms used to have eggs that tasted great
| but perhaps as they got more popular and sourced eggs from
| more places, their eggs quality dropped and I stopped buying
| them.
| geitir wrote:
| Happy egg are my favorite as well. I have to say though, I
| tried their organic line and the yolks are indeed not as
| orange and a bit more runny. I actually buy the standard line
| for this reason
| bencollier49 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class. :-)
|
| Speaking as one of them!
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > English contingent on HN here going peak middle-class
|
| Put the Daily Mail down right this instant !
| yaseer wrote:
| "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! :)
| swarnie wrote:
| I buy these regularly but i always though it was down to the
| specific breed of chicken, in Clarence Court's case the use of
| a Burford Brown.
| wirthjason wrote:
| 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.
| guilhas wrote:
| Quality of the food and treatment of the animal? Generally home
| grown chickens are more colored than supermarket
| cpr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| glandium wrote:
| Similar answer to the question "why is salmon pink/orange?".
| tacticaldev wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'd probably use the term "marketing" rather than "propaganda".
| tomxor wrote:
| > 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.
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