A video claiming that eggs can have green yolks is circulating on social media. According to the video, pigments in the food consumed by chickens directly influence the colour of the yolks they produce. The video claims that corn, tomatoes, and carrots in chicken feed give the yolk its yellow hue, while a diet of spinach, peas, and kale can produce a green yolk.The video prominently features multiple shots of vivid green yolks being fried in a pan – and seems to suggest that these are real examples of green yolks. We looked to available research published in reputable journals to find out of there is any truth to the claim.

There is some truth to the notion that diet impacts to the colour of egg yolks. Egg yolks get their colour from pigments in the foods hens eat – called carotenoids. Carotenoids typically exhibit yellow, orange, red and purple colours. The shade and intensity of the yolks is directly influenced by the levels of carotenoids in their diet, which varies across types of feed – from grass, to corn, to wheat. Farmers might also supplement carotenoid levels with concentrated extracts to reach or maintain a certain yolk colour.The standard colour grading scale for egg yolk shade is called the DSM or Roche scale and ranges from light yellow to dark orange. Egg yolks tend to fall within this spectrum even when hens feed on “green foods” like kale or grass. This has been studied extensively for decades, with studies finding that these green foods typically contribute to a darker colour on the scale – that is, darker orange instead of green. For instance, several different papers have specifically studied the effects of spirulina (a blue-green algae) on yolk colour. All found that the high level of carotenoids in spirulina led to darker yolks – despite the spirulina itself exhibiting blue-green hues.

There have been recorded cases of olive-green yolks as a result of hens eating foods such which have specific pigments that can give yolks a greenish hue. For instance, Alfalfa leaves were found by one study to have this effect. However, this does not encompass all green foods – nor are there any recorded cases of yolks that are the same bright green as the claim video. Another recently observed case of green yolks was in 2020 when a farmer in Kerala, India, reported that his chickens were consistently laying eggs with green yolks (the below images are from his Facebook page).Scientists who studied the chickens concluded the most likely explanation was that they were consuming natural herbs such as sida cordifolia which led to green pigments being retained in the yolks. This was supported by the same chickens eventually reverting to laying eggs with normal yolks after being fed a controlled diet of normal feed.

However, it is also this case that produced the original video of the “green yolks” from the claim video. Clips of the bright green eggs being fried have been circulating online for at least three years. We traced them to an original video posted in 2021 that is part of a dramatic re-enactment of the above case by HISTORY TV18, a television channel in India. The egg yolks in the video appear to be either digitally or physically altered to a bright shade of green and noticeably differ from the real images.Therefore, some green plants can have pigments that can cause green yolks, and certain foods are known to directly influence the darkness of egg yolks. However, the clips of green eggs in the claim clip are not real and feeding hens green food will not necessarily (or even typically) cause green yolks. Based on the wide body of existing studies on egg yolk colour, the broad and vague claim that eating green foods can directly turn egg yolks bright green is misleading and mostly false.

When attempting to find the origin of the clip being used in this recent claim, we traced it to accounts on YouTube and TikTok that appear to be run by the same company – Trade Life. Both accounts are fairly new and churn out regular short-form videos of food-based content paired with a voiceover and footage clipped from other YouTube videos (without sources or mention of specific evidence).While many of these short clips have few views and engagement, one will occasionally go viral and get re-shared by other accounts. The egg yolk clip was posted in early October 2024.

However, when digging even deeper, we found that this account does not always produce original content. A version of the claim clip with a different narrator was posted at least a month earlier. Trade Life appear to have used the clip and its exact wording but replaced the narration and added their own watermark.

This claim gives us a look into the web of content farms that feed off each other on different platforms – reposting or stealing clips from each other and spreading misinformation across the internet in different formats and with different narratives attached. This not only leads to an increase in misinformation more broadly, but also saturates the internet with media that is difficult to disprove and hard to trace to a specific source.