Farm Fresh Eggs vs Store bought eggs
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paigesutton
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2017 12:09 pm
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Farm Fresh Eggs vs Store bought eggs
Can anyone offer ideas on how to compare farm fresh eggs to store bought eggs? Calories? Color? Shell thickness? Taste?
Re: Farm Fresh Eggs vs Store bought eggs
I don't know the information off the top of my head, so here are some links that you might find helpful:
http://www.hobbyfarms.com/store-bought- ... sh-eggs-4/
http://www.acsda-nutrition.com/blog/a-t ... ore-bought
https://www.backyardchickencoops.com.au ... free-range
Hope this helps.
http://www.hobbyfarms.com/store-bought- ... sh-eggs-4/
http://www.acsda-nutrition.com/blog/a-t ... ore-bought
https://www.backyardchickencoops.com.au ... free-range
Hope this helps.
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SciB
- Expert
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- Occupation: Retired molecular biologist, university researcher and teacher
- Project Question: I wish to join Scibuddies to be able to help students achieve the best science project possible and to understand the science behind it.
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Re: Farm Fresh Eggs vs Store bought eggs
Hi Paige,
That's an interesting question. I know that the color of the yolk depends on what the hens eat. Free-range chickens that eat bugs, greens, weed seeds and corn usually have darker yolks than birds fed on commercial diets: https://foodandnutrition.org/may-2013/e ... nt-colors/
You could compare farm eggs to store eggs on the basis of yolk color by eye, but for a science project you really want to have a way of measuring the darkness of the yolk that gives you an actual number that you can use for statistical comparisons. There are some free image analysis programs I have used to quantitate the density of a jpeg image from a camera and you could try using one of those to measure the darkness of photos of your egg yolks. http://www.biocompare.com/Bio-Imaging-M ... Downloads/
The other variable that would be great to measure is thickness or hardness of the shell. I can tell when I break an egg that one has a harder or softer shell just by the amount of force it takes to crack it, but there again, you really need a physical rather than subjective measurement of hardness. There are force meters that companies use to test the breaking points of products but I doubt if you could get access to one to test your eggs. Maybe you could rig up something with a scale that you could add weight to until the egg just cracks. Other experts please 'weigh' in here!
The only other property I can see that would relate to freshness and that you might be able to quantitate would be the viscosity of the white. I have noticed that some eggs have sort of runny whites while others have very viscous ones. I did a search for this but did not get a definite answer to what might cause this so I don't know if that would be a good test to compare farm eggs with store eggs.
I hope this helps. Please post again if you need more.
Sybee
That's an interesting question. I know that the color of the yolk depends on what the hens eat. Free-range chickens that eat bugs, greens, weed seeds and corn usually have darker yolks than birds fed on commercial diets: https://foodandnutrition.org/may-2013/e ... nt-colors/
You could compare farm eggs to store eggs on the basis of yolk color by eye, but for a science project you really want to have a way of measuring the darkness of the yolk that gives you an actual number that you can use for statistical comparisons. There are some free image analysis programs I have used to quantitate the density of a jpeg image from a camera and you could try using one of those to measure the darkness of photos of your egg yolks. http://www.biocompare.com/Bio-Imaging-M ... Downloads/
The other variable that would be great to measure is thickness or hardness of the shell. I can tell when I break an egg that one has a harder or softer shell just by the amount of force it takes to crack it, but there again, you really need a physical rather than subjective measurement of hardness. There are force meters that companies use to test the breaking points of products but I doubt if you could get access to one to test your eggs. Maybe you could rig up something with a scale that you could add weight to until the egg just cracks. Other experts please 'weigh' in here!
The only other property I can see that would relate to freshness and that you might be able to quantitate would be the viscosity of the white. I have noticed that some eggs have sort of runny whites while others have very viscous ones. I did a search for this but did not get a definite answer to what might cause this so I don't know if that would be a good test to compare farm eggs with store eggs.
I hope this helps. Please post again if you need more.
Sybee