Green Living
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
question about eggs?
I am not really a green person but am a vegetarian because of animal issues. I eat eggs and milk though. I always bought hormone free milk cage free eggs because I thought that the chickens were able to run about freely. I just read a few posts on here that say that this label means nothing. I pay $2 more for cage free eggs. Does this label mean nothing?
I have seen the following in my grocery store:
cage free eggs
grain fed chicken eggs
organic eggs
normal eggs
Which one is the best to buy?
thanks
Re: question about eggs?
Cage free doesn't really mean they aren't still squished and confined, sadly.
If I don't buy eggs from local chicken "farms" (not really farms so much as people who just have some chickens), I buy certified humane eggs.
http://www.certifiedhumane.org/
For milk I buy Organic Valley because its a composed of small local family farms, and there are stringent requirements that go above and beyond organic, including pasture time for cattle.
I try very hard to buy eggs straight from the "farm" as Alisha said. If not I tend to buy organic/certified humane. You can try searching www.localharvest.com as well as a few other websites that I can't think of right now (sorry) to find something close to you!
I buy Stonyfield Organic milk which is local to where I am.
I don't buy everything organic but dairy is something I always have gone the local, organic route with. I also try to do that with meats as well.
This isn't correct, sadly. I wish the organic label had some effect on how animals are treated but it doesn't. Organic means the chickens aren't given artifical horomones, or antibiotics, and they're fed organic feed (i.e, no pesticides or GMO in their feed). However, this means they can still be squished into tiny pens, never see the outdoors, and be fed organic corn feed. Chickens, as well as all the other animals that we force to eat corn like cows and pigs, are not natural corn eaters. Real chicken food is forage (bugs, lizards, etc..) and bits of grass.
As PP have said, the only way to know how the chickens eggs come from are raised is to know how someone raised them. I get our eggs from our local farmer's market. Go to localharvest.org to find one near you. Let me tell you, our eggs come from happy chickens. They roam the whole horse & pig pastures, grazing on grubs and bits of grass, have a coop like the Taj Mahal, and live long lives before they become the chicken meat that the farmer sells. Which I don't buy, I am also a vegetarian.
I buy organic milk from either Organic Valley, a regional network of local cooperatives like Alisha said, or a local to me milk that I can't remember the name of the farm of at the moment. Comes in glass bottles. Same as chickens, organic milk means no artifical hormones or antibiotics, and are fed organic feed. It saddens me to know that this means most organic milk brands don't treat their cows well, Horizon being one of the worst. These cows are fed organic corn, which makes them sick because cows are supposed to eat grass, and they're held in feedlots with no access to the outdoors and milked by machine three times a day. Conventional and some organic dairy cows are literally milked until they are completely spent, them they're turned into cow by-products like tallow (fat) that are fed to beef cows. It's a disgusting cycle.
ETA: "free range" means that the chickens must have access to the outdoors. That access is very restricted. Their huge pens, which contain hundreds of chickens smooshed together, have a very small door to a strip of enclosed grass outside, and that door isn't open until the chickens are ~5 weeks old. By then the chickens are already set in their ways and don't even notice the door is there, so they don't use it. "Cage free" means the hens aren't enclosed in battery cages, which are cages that are so small the bird can't stand up, turn around, or spread its wings. However, the hens are usually keep in the same small pens with hundreds of other chickens, with nesting boxes along eat side that also provide access to their food, so the hens usually sit in their nesting box and eat, and make eggs, and eat and poop, and make eggs, until the end.
Just a point about local eggs straight from a farmer: They may be cheaper and easier to get than you think.
We can get a dozen organic humanely raised eggs from a pick-up site 3 blocks from our house, for half the price of teh organic ones at the grocery. A local farmer has drop-offs all over the city. We place an order via email on Sat. and pick up our eggs on Mon., anytime after 4pm. It is easy peasy. We can also get organic milk for cheaper than the grocery at the same time.