A Great Source of Vegetarian Protein

Whether you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore, eggs remain one of the best sources of protein available- a high protein-to-carbohydrates ratio, low in fat, and the cholesterol?  Unless you have high cholesterol (in particular very high cholesterol), having an egg or two is perfectly healthy.

But since eggs don’t grow on trees or sprout out of the ground, it’s not only useful but also humane to make the effort to know where exactly that omelet you’re eating comes from. The short answer is of course the grocery store, or Whole Foods, or maybe even the farmers’ market, but that’s still too vague.  The vast majority of eggs produced in the United States, as well as the rest of the Western world, comes from industrial factory farms, which are very unpleasant places, both in terms of the quality of the eggs produced and the lives of the chickens themselves, which are often confined to tight cages for most of their lives, with very little, if any, time or space provided for them to move around, as chickens naturally are wont to do.

If you knew that you had a choice, that you could choose the eggs that you buy and eat from a farm that treats its chickens well – where they live a life that’s cage-free, and one where they’re provided with grass, or at least dirt, to run around on – as opposed to industrially-raised chickens, which are confined in cages amidst incredibly foul-smelling conditions, and never given a chance to be outside let alone run around…wouldn’t you chose option A?  Even if you really don’t care about the living conditions of the egg-laying hens (and why wouldn’t you?), knowing that the quality of the eggs themselves will be compromised based on their source – very stressed-out chickens – can be another reason to strive for eggs from humane sources.

There are now informational tools out there that allow us to make wise choices in our egg selecting, and the best resource I know of comes from The Cornucopia Institute, which lists organic egg providers and rates them on a point system, with a “5-egg” rating being the best, and a “1-egg” rating being the worst.  They only categorize eggs in the U.S., so if you live outside of the U.S., see if you can find an equivalent for your country.  Otherwise I would request that you do the closest thing you can to buying your eggs from a farmer, or maybe you can get them from a neighbor who happens to have egg-laying hens on-site.

For those of you in the U.S., here again is the list:  Organic Egg Scorecard

Use it wisely, and make your egg selecting count.

Michael Shaw is a writer who covers health, nutrition, and trends in progressive foods including unrefined flours and unrefined sugars.  Read more at his website No Flour, No Sugar Diet.

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