Choosing Good eggs

Among foods, eggs are the most healthy and nutritious. There are many types of eggs. But the most popular one is that of chicken. Eggs are not only consisting of high-quality protein, they are enriched of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that provide several health benefits.

• Healthy weight: The protein in eggs helps to stay energized and feel full for longer which contributes to maintaining a healthy weight.
• Strong muscles: High-quality protein may help to keep and build adult muscle strength and help prevent muscle loss in middle-aged and older adults.
• Healthy pregnancy: Egg yolks have an essential nutrient called choline, that contributes to fetal brain development and helps prevent birth defects.
• Brain function: Choline also aids the brain function of adults by maintaining the structure of brain cell membranes and helping relay messages from the brain through nerves to the muscles.
• Healthy immune system: vitamin A, vitamin B-12, and selenium in eggs are helping to keep the immune system healthy.
• Eye health: Eggs contain two powerful antioxidants, lutein and zeaxanthin that help prevent age-related blindness.

Consuming eggs comes with some health risks such as bacterial infections and allergies. It is important for people with allergies to remember check ingredient list before consuming baked foods. To avoid bacterial infections like salmonella, don’t purchase eggs that have cracked shells. After purchasing, store them in the refrigerator. According to USDA, bacteria can easily enter eggs at room temperature. And before adding eggs you can determine whether it is good or bad by appearance of egg white and egg yolk.

How to determine which eggs to keep and which eggs to discard?

Eggs are safe to eat, if they have following appearances:

• Cloudy egg white indicates that egg is extremely fresh.
• Dark yellow yolk indicates the hen’s diet. If Hen fed lighter color feeds like wheat, it produces eggs with lighter color yolks.  If Hen fed darker color feeds like green plants, corn and alfalfa produce eggs with darker color yolks.
• Blood or meat spot indicates rupture of a small blood vessel(s) in yolk at time of ovulation, or deposit of tissue during egg formation.
• Green ring on hard-cooked yolk result of overcooking egg, caused by sulfur and iron compound reactions on the surface of the yolk.

And Do not eat eggs with these appearances:

• Off-colour egg white indicates spoilage due to pseudomonas bacteria. These bacteria produced a greenish, fluorescent, water-soluble pigment in the egg white.
• Black or green spots inside the egg indicates bacterial or fungal contamination of the egg.

Does floating egg means a bad egg?

It’s a popular misconception that rotten eggs float because they contain more gas. If inside of the egg rotted and the gas couldn’t escape, the mass of the egg would be unchanged. And Its volume also be constant. (Did you ever see eggs expand like balloons?). So, gas must leave the egg for it to float. Eggshell is porous, so some of the gas lost to atmosphere through the eggshell. Eggs have an air space that becomes larger as the egg ages and acts as a buoyancy aid. An old egg can float in water when its air space has enlarged sufficiently to keep it buoyant. Fresh eggs sink because yolk, egg white, and gas cells have enough mass that the density of the egg is greater than the density of water. Simply it means, a fresh egg is heavier than water (simple physics theory). Best way to determine the quality of buoyant egg, crack the egg into a separate bowl and examine for odor or appearance.