The color of yolk: Egg-spert cracks the shell on the differences

Not all chicken yolks look the same. Some are pale yellow — while some are so orange they’re nearly red. 

But what does it mean? Are egg yolks like lettuce, where a darker color indicates more nutrients?

Fox News Digital spoke to an egg expert to crack the case. 

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The color of a chicken yolk, cookbook author and backyard chicken expert Lisa Steele told Fox News Digital, “is completely dependent on the hen’s diet.” 

Steele, who lives in Maine, is the creator of Fresh Eggs Daily, a website about raising chickens. She is also the author of “The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook.” 

“Foods that are high in xanthophyll and carotene, which are basically pigments called carotenoids, will make nice dark orange egg yolks,” she said. 

Carotene is found in orange-colored foods, she said, such as carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe and pumpkins. 

Xanthophyll can be found in leafy green vegetables, like spinach and kale. 

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But while a darker egg yolk does not mean a chicken is eating a nutritious, organic or fresh diet, “it likely will correlate, since the foods with the pigment are also packed with other nutrients,” she said. 

Even so, feed companies and commercial egg farms have discovered workarounds to create a darker egg yolk without these nutrient-dense foods, Steele said. 

These companies “have gotten smart and realized that consumers want to see that bright orange yolk, so they’ll add things like marigold, paprika, sea kelp, corn [and] alfalfa to ‘artificially’ boost the yolk color,” she said. 

To ensure the most nutritious eggs possible, Steele suggests customers look for certain labels on cartons at the grocery store. 

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Chickens that are “pasture-raised” or “free range” will typically lay eggs with a darker, more orange-colored yolk, Steele said, “because their diet consists mainly of grasses, weeds and other plants.”

It is important to note that “cage-free” and “pasture-raised” are not the same thing, she said.

Pasture-raised eggs are the “gold standard,” Steele told Fox News Digital, noting that some “cage-free” chickens may still be living out their lives in a warehouse. 

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The eggs from pasture-raised chickens have less cholesterol and more nutrients, Steele said, because of their healthier, more varied diets. 

Yolks are not the only thing that come in different colors. 

The shells vary as well. 

Unlike yolks, the color of a shell has nothing to do with the nutritional value of the egg, said Steele.

The color is “purely based on the breed of chicken,” Steele said. 

“Some hens have brown dye, while others have blue and some have none.” 

And that’s no yolk.