When it comes to eggs, the master can't resist the urge to sing their praises. They are the perfect embodiment of "great value for the price." Not only are they nutritious, but they are also easy and versatile to prepare, such as boiled eggs, egg soup, steamed eggs, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, marinated eggs, tea eggs... Despite their perfection, it doesn't stop people's desire to compare them.
1. Are free-range eggs more nutritious than regular eggs?
Free-range eggs are laid by hens that roam freely, while regular eggs come from caged hens. Free-range eggs are generally more expensive in the market, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are more nutritious.
An analysis of the nutritional components of free-range and regular eggs reveals certain differences. However, these differences can also be found among different free-range eggs or among different regular eggs, so there's nothing particularly special about it. Moreover, eggs are already highly nutritious in themselves, so this slight difference is nothing to worry about.
2. Are brown eggs better than white eggs?
Brown eggs aren't white eggs that have dyed their hair to be fashionable; the color is purely determined by the hen's breed.
However, in the supermarket, brown eggs are always more popular. If you ask the lady next to you who is picking them with great confidence, she will probably tell you, "They look better, and they just seem more nutritious."
Apart from looking good, the latter statement has no basis at all. As for taste and quality, there is no difference. If you're really going by appearance, just buy based on your own aesthetic sense. (And don't even think about targeting the master!)
3. Are runny eggs more nutritious than fully cooked eggs?
Compared to fully cooked eggs, runny eggs look more appealing and prevent the risk of choking, but this doesn't necessarily apply to nutrition.
Eggs contain protease inhibitors, which reduce the activity of proteases in digestive juices, thus affecting digestion.
However, as long as the egg is heated sufficiently, the protease inhibitors are destroyed, allowing the proteases to work more effectively and promoting better digestion.
The minerals in the egg are not lost during heating, but sensitive vitamins are. Therefore, runny eggs preserve vitamins better.
In summary, although there are nutritional differences between the two, the difference is not significant. However, for safety reasons, it's best to eat fully cooked eggs.
4. Are bouncy eggs artificial eggs?
There is a legend that artificial eggs, when cooked, have yolks that can bounce on the table like ping-pong balls. In reality, they are completely innocent and not fake. There are two main reasons for this phenomenon:
If eggs are stored for too long at low temperatures or even frozen, the yolk becomes very hard and bouncy. If the hen's diet includes cottonseed cake or other feed with excessive gossypol, although cottonseed cake is rich in protein and cheap, consuming too much of it can turn the eggs into "rubber eggs."
Not to mention the technical difficulty of making artificial eggs, the cost would be high for an egg that costs so little. If you do encounter an egg with a strange appearance, it is generally caused by factors like feed or the hen's physical condition. If you don't want to eat it, then don't.
5. Can you eat a cooked egg with chicken droppings on it?
You should still wash eggs before boiling them, otherwise, peeling one in a crowd is a rather... interesting sight. Chicken droppings contain a large number of pathogenic bacteria, parasites, and their eggs, and are a medium for spreading diseases. Recently, flu viruses like H7N9 have also been contributed to by chicken droppings. However, boiling the egg in boiling water for a few minutes will kill the pathogenic bacteria at high temperatures.
If a boiled egg has chicken droppings on it, there's no need to worry too much, because the few minutes of boiling process will have killed the pathogenic bacteria with high heat. For folks with unique tastes, if you like to eat them, go ahead.
6. Are double-yolk eggs the result of hormone injections?
A double-yolk egg is actually caused by a hen's irregular ovulation. Normally, if a hen is perfectly healthy, she will lay one yolk per day, resulting in a normal egg.
If she has an irregular cycle and ovulates twice in a row, these two yolks will be encased together to form a double-yolk egg. If her cycle is even more irregular, you might even get "triple-yolk" eggs.
Laying a larger egg can easily lead to inflammation and rupture of the hen's oviduct, and even lead to the hen's death. So, wouldn't injecting hormones to force hens to lay double-yolk eggs be a suicidal move? More importantly, even if hormones were injected, they would only act on the hen's body; the hormones cannot get into the egg. As for nutrition, they are about the same as regular eggs.