I was wondering about the science of it, too. It's easy to taste the difference between my friend's eggs and the farmer's market eggs. The difference is that the farmer's market eggs are much less tasty than my friend's eggs. I agree that the farmer's market eggs taste more like eggs than even the organic eggs in the supermarket, but there is a range. Each farmer's eggs taste a bit different.

I'm going out on a limb here and saying that the freshness of the eggs is equal. Both farmer's market and my friends eggs include the laying dates.

Diets are markedly different. Farmer's use organic chicken feed from the feed store and plants and insects from the meadow. My friend uses food from the supermarket that has gone beyond the pull-date, plus grazing in his garden when he isn't growing anything.

So the question is, how can diet make any difference in the egg? Is there a difference in the composition of the egg, are the proteins different, or is it just a different mix of minerals in the egg?