The egg shelves at the supermarket can be tricky to navigate, since you have to choose between labels and claims like free-range, cage-free and pasture-raised (oh my). And then considering organic designations and various welfare certifications can be overwhelming, leaving you to just go with the cheapest option.

While the demand for cage-free eggs is on the rise, conventional (read: caged) hens still supply the vast majority of eggs in the U.S., with 81.6% (or 275.4 million laying hens) housed in conventional cage environments as of March 2019.

That statistic may come as a surprise, as its rare that a producer will proudly proclaim that their eggs come from caged chickens. Terms like farm fresh, natural or vegetarian may be used to hide caged eggs in plain sight, as they have nothing to do with how the hens are raised. (You could pick up some vegetarian eggs from the supermarket without realizing you bought a carton of caged eggs.)

Which eggs you should buy depends on what you prioritize in your food sources but the experts HuffPost consulted all agreed that as far as animal welfare is concerned, caged is a no-go.

To Josh Balk, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States , the differences between cage-free, free-range, pasture-raised and organic are minute compared to the vast difference in hens quality of life between any of these options and caged. He said that if you dont see any of those four labels on a carton, youre looking at caged eggs, one of the cruelest products ever offered in our food system.

For Jim Hauskey, director of marketing at Happy Egg Co. , free-range is the base standard for how hens need to be treated.

To help you make better decisions about buying eggs and more confidently decode their cartons, weve defined common terms you may encounter below.