What's the Difference Between Fertilized Eggs and Unfertilized Eggs?
The average consumer buying a carton of chicken eggs at the store or farmers market can’t tell the difference between a fertilized egg and an unfertilized egg from outside the shell. Chances are you’ve never eaten a fertilized egg, because nearly all eggs sold commercially are produced by hens that have not mated, says Lauren Cobey, media representative for the American Egg Board.
bacon eggs and coffee high protein breakfast header
The difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs comes down to whether a rooster has been involved or not. Hens do not need a rooster to lay an egg; they do so (almost daily) on their own simply according to light patterns. However, if a rooster does mate with a hen, the eggs she produces are fertilized and, under the right incubation conditions, can bear chicks. No rooster means zero possibility of the egg ever becoming anything more than that.
When fertilized eggs are sold for consumption, there is no danger of eating a developing embryo, says Cobey, for a few reasons: All eggs sold in the United States as food must be refrigerated, a process that halts any growth inside the shell. Also, the interior of any egg intended to be sold as food must be inspected—accomplished by shining a bright light through the shell (called candling)—which highlights any irregularities, such as a developing chick. These regulations hold true whether the eggs are intended for a large chain like Safeway or for the farmers’ market. Eggs with irregularities never make it to retail and are destroyed (except for that one time).
Nutritionally, says Cobey, fertilized and unfertilized eggs are the same. They also taste the same, says Kathy Shea Mormino in her “Facts & Myths About Fertile Eggs” article on her blog, The Chicken Chick. Mormino is an attorney as well as a backyard-chicken keeper, advocate, and educator who’s appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and on local and national TV, radio, and podcasts.
If you find a blood spot inside an egg, it doesn’t mean that egg was fertile either, Mormino says. A blood vessel and rupture at any point in a hen’s reproductive system as a result of a vitamin A deficiency, genetics, or some random occurrence. People may think so because fertile eggs develop veins around day 4 of incubation, but it doesn’t look like a blood spot.
That said, if you’re still on board with eating eggs, we have some delicious (unfertilized) egg recipes you gotta try.
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