Let’s squash this claim once and for all. A dark egg yolk doesn’t make an egg healthier. At all. There are people out there that try to make you believe the yolk color or shell color determines the health of the egg itself. This is a myth. A dark egg yolk doesn’t make an egg healthier. It can happen for a variety of reasons, such as manipulating the hen’s diet, genetics or age of the bird.
Diet can certainly manipulate the color of the yolk. For instance, when a chicken eats more foods rich in carotenoids, or vitamin A, the color may get a deep yellow. But egg yolk coloring also has to do with the type of chicken laying the egg and even its age. The longer the egg takes to develop, the deeper the color of the yolk. Hybrid chickens will naturally be lighter in color as they are bred to produce a lot of eggs.
The eggs shown below are from my personal flock. They range from pale yellow to orange. They are all fed the same feed, have access to the same grasses and treats. The only difference is I have three different types of chickens. The paler yolk is from my hybrid girls and the darker ones are from my mutt chickens.
Along the way, the farming industry found out that consumers will insist that the darker egg yolk means more nutritious. So what did they do? They started adding corn and marigold to the feed to deepen the yolk color. Consumers bought it with naivety. And don’t think this is a GMO, thing. Organic, GMO-free feeds are just as guilty if not more so as some of the most processed chicken feeds out there.
So next time you pick up a carton of eggs, don’t buy based on gimmicks. Buy what you can afford and if you really care about the health of your eggs, promote change by demanding industry standards to change. In the meantime, don’t waste your money on people that make false statements.
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