I’ve had some questions about why we don’t have as many eggs for sale as we have in the past. There is sometimes a little undertone that someone (or some chicken!) is not doing their job properly.
Even us nutrition-conscious CrossFitters sometimes lose touch with the fact that a food so ubiquitous as the Egg, is actually a seasonal food. Chickens that are not kept in a concrete bunker with their beaks chopped off, dosed with antibiotics and kept under artificial light, do not lay as many eggs in the winter as they do in the summer. It has to do with the number of hours they are exposed to light and dark. The human reproductive system actually operates in the same manner, but we’ll leave that out of the discussion for now. Food production is affected by so many things that most of us denizens of Trader Joe’s forget about too often. For example, my kids and I used to love the frequency with which we would find a double-yolked egg in our carton. Tragically, Mark (the farmer of our eggs) lost the double-yolk laying chicken to his neighbor’s uncontrolled, trespassing dogs. I encourage you all, when you are inconvenienced by a change in your local food supply, to inquire as to what caused the change. Many of the Tucson area local farmers are affected by such things as a neighbor’s dog or an unexpected cold night. Rather than be exasperated by the unpredictable change, use it as a chance to try something different, or simply to appreciate the abundance of alternative foods that we all live with every day. No broccoli at the Farmer’s Market? Well get yourselves one of those enormous, luscious pale green cabbages then.
When we do have eggs, try your very best not to overcook the precious yolk. Overcooking the yolk ruins the perfect fats that are in it and renders the sulfur-bearing amino acids less available. Those amino acids are what your body uses to build our most potent anti-oxidants and detoxifiers like glutathione. You can’t take glutathione as a supplement because it doesn’t survive our digestive system, but you can ingest plenty of the precursor nutrients like those found in raw or slightly cooked egg yolks.
Check out this description of one farmer’s approach to raising chickens:
” …this pasture was the field that had been, a day or two before, occupied by the cattle, which were now behind us in another demarcated area of green grass. In addition to enjoying the grass that has been courteously mowed down for them by the cattle (chickens don’t like to eat grasses that are too high), they peck through the cow pies, eating the larvae of flies that lay their eggs in the dung. This disinfects the cow pies breaking the cycle of bovine stomach parasites , eliminating the need for synthetic worm medicines for the cattle. Their pecking also breaks up the cow pies and spreads them out over a larger area. This means that the manure recycles into the soil much more readily. Otherwise, the nitrogen in the manure would concentrate in certain spots, creating overly rich bunches of grass that cows refuse to eat.” -Full Moon Feast, by Jessica Prentice.
If you are interested in learning more about these sorts of food issues join us for the upcoming nutrition class. More information at www.primalplan.com.
