Sensory evaluation of egg products and eggs laid from hens fed diets with different fatty acid composition and supplemented with antioxidants

Is the sensory quality of eggs influenced by adding vegetable lipids, animal and vegetable sources of n − 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n − 3 PUFA), and/or natural antioxidants to the hens diet? To answer this question three feeding experiments were conducted adding either palm butter, grape seed oil, flax seed oil, n − 3 PUFA such as flax seed and marine algae and the natural antioxidant rosemary to the hens diet. For each experiment a standard diet was used as control. The results suggested that vegetable lipids (palm butter, grape seed, flax seed), n − 3 PUFA (flax seed and marine algae) and rosemary may be used to hens fed diet without affecting the sensory properties of eggs.The sensory quality of eggs was evaluated on hard boiled, scrambled eggs and Madeira cake.In this work, we report the first sensory characterization of eggs and products containing eggs obtained from hens diet based on grape and algae plus vitamin E and rosemary extract.