The “Vital Farms Egg Scandal” Isn’t a Scandal, It’s a Wake-Up Call
The so-called “Vital Farms Egg Scandal” has opened many people’s eyes to a reality that’s been hiding in plain sight: the modern food system is built on corn and soy as its dominant commodity crops.
(If you would prefer to watch this live, I go through these points on a YouTube live, here!)
For many, this is the first time they’re realizing that Vital Farms feeds its laying hens corn and soy, and that even the black-carton eggs are produced with GMO corn and soy in the feed.
That realization didn’t come from a press release or a recall. It came from fatty acid testing I conducted over a year ago in collaboration with Michigan State University (which I guess one influencer found, and its now circulating over the internet like a game of telephone).
The fatty acid tests show that two organic Vital Farms eggs contain roughly the same amount of linoleic acid (an omega-6 PUFA found in seed oils) as canola oil, and our eggs contain 73% less Linoleic Acid
I understand why people feel frustrated and confused.
When you pay a premium price, you expect something meaningfully different, not just better marketing branding.
But truly, this is not a scandal.
Vital Farms has never lied about their feed. They have openly stated in their FAQs that their chickens are fed corn and soy.
What’s actually happening is that many people assumed that a higher price tag and a “pasture-raised” label meant something far more distinct from the conventional system than it does in practice.
So what’s really being exposed here isn’t deception. It’s five much bigger issues:
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How easily consumers trust labels from large food companies, revealing the power of fancy packaging, cute pictures, and marketing language
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The expectation that massive food corporations operate like small farms, despite the realities of scale (and yes, Vital Farms is now publicly traded, with BlackRock among its largest shareholders)
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The outsized influence of online influencer voices without farming or feed-formulation experience, where buzzwords often replace understanding
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The inescapable dominance of the modern corn- and soy-based agricultural system
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The gap between what most people think “pasture-raised” means, and what it actually means under current regulations
Unfortunately, fancy labels don’t mean much, especially when it comes to “pasture-raised.”
Learning this reality years ago is exactly why we chose a different path at Nourish.
Instead of trying to shop our way out of a broken system, we set out to build a healthier egg, and an entirely different food system, from the ground up.
Why the Fatty Acid Results Are Exactly What We’d Expect
Many people are surprised by the fatty acid test results, but this outcome is so well established in the scientific literature that it’s considered foundational poultry nutrition. (ref, ref)
The fats present in chicken feed are directly transferred to the egg yolk.
This isn’t controversial. It isn’t novel. It’s biochemistry.
When chickens consume more polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs), more PUFAs appear in the egg.
The yolk simply reflects the fatty acid composition of the diet.
Soy is particularly high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, especially linoleic acid.
When soy is included in the feed, linoleic acid increases in the yolk, period. The amount of linoleic acid in an egg is not random; it is dose-dependent, tracking closely with how much linoleic acid the hen consumes.
That’s exactly what the fatty acid testing shows.
When you eat two of these eggs per day, you are consuming roughly the same amount of linoleic acid as you would get from canola oil.
If you double that intake and eat four eggs per day, you’re looking at approximately 4.6 grams of linoleic acid, an amount comparable to about ⅔ tablespoon of vegetable oil/seed oil, or roughly 1½ tablespoons of canola oil
This is not a fluke. It’s not a lab anomaly. And it’s not unique to Vital Farms.
When chickens are fed soy, corn byproducts, and vegetable oils, their egg yolks will contain higher levels of PUFAs. That outcome isn/t just predictable, it’s inevitable.
In other words, the fatty acid profile of the egg is simply telling the truth about what the bird was fed.
The Reality of Chicken Farming
Chickens are not cows.
They are omnivorous, monogastric animals, meaning they have a single stomach and cannot convert grass into energy the way ruminants like cattle can.
Chickens also have very fast metabolisms and a high core body temperature. Anyone who has raised chickens knows this well: they poop a lot.
That’s a sign of rapid digestion and a high metabolism.
And high metabolic rates come with high demands.
Chickens require high levels of calories, nutrients and protein.
Laying hens require consistent, energy-dense nutrition to meet their needs for:
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Adequate calories
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Complete protein (essential amino acids)
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Critical minerals like calcium and phosphorus, which are essential for egg production
Grass and insects alone cannot reliably meet these needs, especially year-round or at any sort of price-reasonable scale.
Without sufficient calories and balanced nutrition, hens will:
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Lose body condition
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Reduce or stop laying
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Develop nutrient deficiencies
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Become more vulnerable to stress and disease
That outcome isn’t “natural.”
It isn’t humane.
It’s neglect.
A Brief Historical Context
Humans have domesticated chickens for roughly 7,000–8,000 years. For nearly all of that time, chickens have lived alongside humans, not as wild, self-sustaining foragers. Chickens are also very easy prey animals, and would die very easily ‘in the wild’.
They’ve always relied on human-provided supplemental food.
Historically, that food included table scraps, locally grown crops, and regionally available grains: feeds that were naturally low in polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs). Think oats, wheat, barley, rice, legumes & other grains.
What has changed, dramatically, is not the need for supplemental feed, but the feed composition.
The Modern Feed Shift
In the last century, industrial feed formulations have become dominated by:
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Corn
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Soy
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Corn byproducts
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Distillers grains
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Industrial seed oils
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Other high PUFA ingredients
Even on pasture, most laying hens still receive 70–90% of their calories from feed, not forage.
This is the reality many consumers don’t realize:
Pasture is a supplement for chickens, not a complete diet.
And when you understand this, you can better understand why
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Pasture-raised ≠ corn- and soy-free
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Pasture-raised ≠ low PUFA
Pasture does provide important benefits. It contributes micronutrients and phytonutrients, allows for natural behaviors like scratching and foraging, provides sunlight exposure, and improves overall animal welfare.
But pasture alone cannot deliver enough consistent calories or protein to sustain a healthy, productive laying hen.
Why Feed Still Matters Most
At the end of the day, what’s in the feed determines what I believe to be some of the most important characteristics of the egg, including:
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The fatty acid profile
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Total PUFA load (especially omega-6 linoleic acid)
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Allergen exposure
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Phytoestrogen content
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The egg’s long-term metabolic impact in humans (since eggs are often a daily food choice, which means daily intake of a higher PUFA load will add up over time)
Eggs are not just a product of how chickens live, they are a product of what chickens eat.
The Reality of the Modern Food System
The unfortunate reality is that roughly 99% of chickens in the U.S. are fed corn and soy, not because farmers are malicious or careless, but because that is what’s readily available, affordable, and logistically possible.
Yes, this includes most pasture-raised eggs.
What differs across production systems isn’t usually the feed, it’s the living conditions.
Terms like cage-free, free-range, and pasture-raised describe how chickens are housed and allowed to move.
They do not meaningfully describe what chickens eat.
Across most of the industry, the feed itself is remarkably consistent.
Modern feed formulations are now dominated by:
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Corn
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Soy
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Corn byproducts
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Distillers grains
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Industrial seed oils
This didn’t happen by accident.
It’s the downstream result of decades of agricultural policy and industrialization: including the expansion of chemical-dependent farming systems and government subsidy programs that heavily prioritized corn and soy as commodity crops, rather than prioritizing food quality, nutrient density, or long-term human health.
That quiet shift in feed composition has profoundly reshaped the nutritional profile of eggs.
This is where the fatty acid composition data becomes especially revealing.
Vital Farms is not an outlier, it is representative of large-scale pasture-raised egg brands. When you look at their fatty acid profile alongside cage-free eggs, the similarity is striking.
That similarity tells us something important:
The feed drives the fatty acid profile, not the housing system.
When the feed is largely the same, the yolk will be largely the same, whether a hen lives in a cage, a barn, or has access to pasture.
Most commercial feeds do not change meaningfully across these systems. So while pasture access can improve animal welfare and provide some nutritional benefits, it does not override the dominant influence of feed composition on:
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PUFA content
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Linoleic acid levels
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Overall fat balance in the egg
In other words, you can’t out-label feed formulation!
And until we address the feed system itself, most eggs, regardless of how they’re marketed, will continue to reflect this same underlying nutritional reality: more PUFAs.
Our Low PUFA Eggs
I’m really proud of what we’ve built over the last five years :) and I want to be clear about why they exist.
If you don’t believe linoleic acid or omega-6 PUFAs matter, then our eggs probably aren’t for you. And that’s okay.
But I do (more on that here).
5 years ago when I got started as a regenerative farmer, reading feed ingredient lists like I read ingredient lists on food, I wasn’t satisfied with the options out there.
I wanted low-PUFA eggs, so we built a system that could actually produce them.
Because the rule is simple and unavoidable:
PUFAs in → PUFAs out.
This is where we chose to do something fundamentally different.
By custom-formulating a corn- and soy-free feed, intentionally designed to be low in PUFAs, we changed the egg itself.
Our feed:
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Meets the full nutritional requirements of laying hens
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Eliminates corn, soy, and flax
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Is deliberately formulated to minimize polyunsaturated fats
As a result, we produce eggs with 73% less omega-6 PUFA than the nation’s leading pasture-raised egg brand.
That means significantly less exposure to the same unstable fats found in seed oils, and better support for energy production, gut health, and long-term metabolic resilience.
These results are not accidental.
They are the direct outcome of intentional feed formulation and design.
Why I Believe Eggs With Fewer PUFAs Matter
Eggs are a daily food for many people, so small differences compound quickly over time.
Reducing PUFA exposure at this level has meaningful downstream effects:
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Lower PUFA intake, day after day
Eating fewer PUFAs means storing fewer PUFAs in your tissues, which supports better energy production and healthier metabolic function over time.
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Greater oxidative stability during cooking
Polyunsaturated fats contain unstable double bonds that oxidize easily under heat. Eggs lower in PUFA produce fewer oxidation byproducts like lipid peroxides and malondialdehyde (MDA).
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Reduced allergen exposure
Soy proteins and corn breakdown products are common allergens and can transfer from feed into the egg. Many customers who previously couldn’t tolerate eggs find they can tolerate ours. Linoleic acid’s effects on gut integrity may also play a role.
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Better taste
More stable fats produce cleaner, richer flavor. People notice, even without knowing why!
These eggs aren’t designed to be trendy.
They’re designed to be biologically appropriate and metabolically supportive!
Eggs our great-great grandmas would recognize.
What to Do
First, we have to reset expectations.
We can’t expect food from big-box grocery stores to meet small-farm, clean-food standards, and we need to stop being surprised when it doesn’t.
Many people want to believe that what’s on a grocery store shelf is equivalent to farm-fresh food. But in most cases, it isn’t.
At the same time, we also need to stop expecting small-farm, clean food to cost the same as grocery store food.
These are fundamentally different farming systems producing fundamentally different food. Equating them isn’t fair, and in practice, it actively harms small regenerative farmers.
Large corporations can absorb losses, optimize for scale, and manipulate pricing expectations. Small farms cannot. When consumers expect “perfect” food at industrial prices, it pushes small farmers out of the market entirely.
Many large pasture-raised egg brands sold in grocery stores come from industrial-scale barns housing 20,000+ hens. Pasture access may exist, but it’s very different from mobile pasture-based systems on regenerative farms, where flocks are moved regularly and feed formulation is intentionally controlled.
Those differences matter.
That disconnect also creates unrealistic expectations about what real food looks like.
No, it’s not natural for all eggs to be the same size or color.
No, produce shouldn’t look flawless.
No, not every steak will look identical.
Variation is a sign of biological reality, not a flaw.
If you want to support food systems that actually prioritize animal nutrition, land stewardship, and human health:
> Seek out small local farms whenever possible
> Use resources like EatWild.com to find producers near you
> Or, if it makes sense for your life, check us out at Nourish Food Club: old-fashioned low-PUFA food, produced intentionally, with the convenience of modern delivery
While much of the modern food system has moved toward highly unsaturated, unstable fats, we’re on a mission to do the opposite: to lower PUFA exposure and bring food back in line with human biology.
Because restoring metabolic health doesn’t start with drugs or labs.
It starts with what’s on your plate!
>> Shop Low PUFA, Corn- and Soy-Free Eggs
