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Why the U.S. Chills Its Eggs and Most of the World Doesn't (2014)
- HelloFellowDevs 7y agoI was originally introduced to the concept of non refrigerated eggs on an episode of the Netflix (branded but not) Original The Big Family Cooking Showdown [0]. They did a home visit and I thought it was weird that they kept their eggs in a box near the windowsill. Obviously since it was common practice they didn't give a background about why it's done that was in England. I've since seen more than a fair share of cooking shows based abroad that have that same unrefrigerated eggs technique, in the back of my mind I'm thinking about the general shelf life and temperature that's needed to keep the eggs from spoiling. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Family_Cooking_Showdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Family_Cooking_Showdow...
- sitharus 7y agoComing from an unrefrigerated country eggs last 4-6 weeks on the shelf at room temperature (<25°C) from laying date, so generally 3-4 after purchase. Not sure how long they last after washing + refrigeration but I assume it's pretty much the same.
- arcticbull 7y ago3-5 weeks in the fridge and a year in the freezer [1]. [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-long-do-eggs-last https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-long-do-eggs-last
- cs02rm0 7y agoPeople from all over the world are reading this, just about coming to terms with the idea that Americans store eggs in the fridge and now you're saying they'd put them in the freezer? A step too far!
- arcticbull 7y agoHonestly posting that link was the first time I'd ever heard of someone putting an egg in the freezer. Kinda grossed out right now, not gonna lie.
- Aromasin 7y agoThey're honestly exactly the same provided you let them thaw slowly first. Forewarning, I once I tried freezing the eggs in their shells and they exploded all over my freezer. Would not recommend. I don't eat eggs anymore, but when I did back in my bodybuilding days I'd have containers with raw egg which I'd dump into boiling water for my poached eggs in the morning. These turned out alright. For scrambled eggs or omelettes, putting them in the pan still frozen is a recipe for disaster.
- agotterer 7y agoAs an American I was always told to be cautious of eating undercooked or raw eggs because of the risk of salmonella. Is this still a real concern of the eggs are pasteurized and refrigerated?
- sitharus 7y agoEggs aren't pasteurised, they're sanitised by washing in the US. As the article says this removes the protective coating that keeps bacteria out, so refrigeration is required to reduce bacteria infiltration. The salmonella would be present on the outside of the egg, so if you're paranoid simply wash the egg immediately before use if you're going to consume it raw. You're more likely to catch something from a salad these days anyway.
- Fomite 7y agoYou can buy pasteurized eggs, either in-shell or as liquid egg products, in the U.S.
- gizmo686 7y agoI haven't been able to find in-shell pasteurized eggs for years. You can pasturize them yourself, but the margins are pretty tight, and there is no way to verify you were successful.
- astura 7y agoPasteurized eggs are available. For example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Davidson-s-Safest-Choice-Large-AA-Pasteurized-Eggs-12-Count/171457741 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Davidson-s-Safest-Choice-Large-AA...
- lostlogin 7y agoI’ve been under the impression that it makes more of a difference if they are washed. Unwashed eggs are supposedly safer. Or so I though. I can’t find anything authoritative on safety: washed versus unwashed.
- 7y ago
- drewmol 7y agoOne thing this article doesn't touch on: the most obvious methed for detecting spoiled eggs is the smell of hydrogen sulfide. Refrigeration increases shelf life but detecting presence of a sulfurous smell is more difficult when the egg is refrigerated. If freshness is in question then allowing the egg to reach room temp prior to giving it 'the sniff test' is recommended.
- astura 7y agoI've always just done the float test, I don't know how reliable that is though.
- likpok 7y agoIIRC that measures time more than spoilage. In the sense that it takes time for eggs to spoil, it works well. You'll be tossing safe-but-old eggs, but eggs aren't that expensive.
- bacon_waffle 7y agoTotally not an expert on eggs nor salmonella, but I've lived in some really dry places and eaten plenty months-old eggs without getting sick from them... The time-to-fail-float-test seems like it's as much about the relative humidity where the egg is stored, as it is about the age of the egg. I think grandma's advice is probably best: Don't crack eggs straight in to whatever you're making. Easier to fish out shell pieces, and you're not going to accidentally mix in a rotten egg.
- Arn_Thor 7y agoNobody told me your grandma's advice, I had to learn that the hard way. In a week I spoiled two omelets and wasted 8 eggs because the last one I cracked into the pan was rotten—twice! Now I always crack each egg into a small bowl before mixing them
- rich-tea 7y agoNot reliable at all. It is reliable for freshness, but that only matters for some things like poached eggs.
- cm2012 7y agoEU average rate of Salmonella is 23 per 100k people, USA is 16 per 100k. So it appears the USA way works better.
- arcticbull 7y agoSorry, do you have some source data for that? Is the difference entirely attributable to the way eggs are stored and processed, or are the Europeans getting salmonella from other sources? It is my understanding that the US and EU have fairly different agricultural regulatory frameworks.
- cm2012 7y agoOn mobile, I googled some papers, but it would be too annoying to go back and copy paste. You can confirm these pretty quick though.
- drewmol 7y agoNot sure but I suspect the EU to have larger regulatory variance among member countries, as well as likely overall lower cost barriers to obtaining a diagnoses.
- The_suffocated 7y agoThe _confirmed_ incidence rates in years 2015 and 2016 are 14.85 and 14.51 (cases per 100000 population) in the USA, and 21.0 and 20.4 in the EU. Sources: * National Enteric Disease Surveillance: Salmonella Annual Report, 2016 https://www.cdc.gov/nationalsurveillance/pdfs/2016-Salmonella-report-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nationalsurveillance/pdfs/2016-Salmonell... * Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_2016-salmonellosis.pdf https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_... However, the incidence rates vary widely among European countries. Portugal had very low (< 4) incidence rates over the period 2012-2016, while the figures in Czech Republic over the same period were ridiculously high (around 100). In the UK, where eggs sold on shelves apparently are required by law _not_ to be washed, the incidence rates in 2015 and 2016 are 14.6 and 15.1, which are on par with the US figures.
- 7y ago
- zie 7y agoThis really sucks if you are homeless and don't have a refrigerator. Another great source of protein unavailable. (as once it's washed, you can't safely keep them at room temp anymore).
- homero 7y agoWhat if you hard boil? It's not like homeless people can go around cooking raw eggs on demand
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIf you are homeless, a much bigger problem is that raw eggs are fragile, easily broken and make a mess when broken. Plus most homeless people have no means to cook. If you are homeless but living in a vehicle and have some means to cook, there are ways around such issues. For example, you can store cold items in a cooler, no refrigerator required. When I was homeless and sleeping in a tent, we sometimes kept perishables for short periods by leaving them outside the tent overnight in cold weather or keeping them in the backpack and keeping it out of the sun. If careful, butter sometimes stayed semi solid for a few days. Modern refrigeration is not the only possible solution. It's just the most familiar for most Americans.
- kkarakk 7y agoyou can eat raw eggs
- DoreenMichele 7y agoOf course you can. You can also eat raw meat. Most people don't. Plus, a high percentage of homeless Americans have serious health issues. If you are, for example, being treated for cancer, you aren't supposed to eat, for example, raw cookie dough because of the raw egg it contains.
- kkarakk 7y agoEating raw eggs is a common thing in india, for the protein(although this is incorrect as cooking eggs leads to more protein absorption). However if i were homeless, why wouldn't i just crack open an egg and eat it? There is almost zero risk of salmonella
- drdrey 7y ago[2014]
- dang 7y agoThanks!
- taneq 7y agoBecause they scrub the protective coating off them, making them much more vulnerable to spoiling. #stopclickbait Australia only started washing eggs recently, in the last 10-20 years. Before then you could leave eggs on the bench for 2+ weeks with no issues, now they need to be refrigerated if you're going to keep them longer than a couple of weeks. It's silly.
- Benjamin_Dobell 7y agoFrom the article: > Why go to the trouble of washing eggs? A lot of it has to do with fear of salmonella. > [...] > eggs contaminated with salmonella are responsible for about 142,000 illnesses a year in the U.S., according to the Food and Drug Administration
- TheRealPomax 7y agoSo let me get this straight: back in 2014, despite egg washing being a practice for decades, there were STILL 142,000 people getting ill from them each year? Sounds like 2014 had some solid data on the fact that it was a pointless practice.
- Benjamin_Dobell 7y agoSurely you'd need to know how many people get Salmonella poisoning from non-washed eggs (either historically or elsewhere in the world) to draw this conclusion.
- onion2k 7y agoHere in the UK we don't wash our eggs as part of the production process. We have a "British Lion" safety mark on British-produced eggs as part of our food standards. Recently they were declared safe to eat raw even if you're pregnant as there were no cases of salmonella linked to them in 2016.
- zaarn 7y agoGermany had 12'000 cases of salmonella in 2016, 14'000 in 2017. USA has 300 Megacitizens, Germany 80. Germany vaccinates the chickens and does not wash or refrigerate eggs in the supermarket. So, atleast in germany, you're 3 times less likely to get infected by salmonella, relative to the population. I would however note that there is no reliable statistic on how many of those are due to eggs and how many are from other sources, considering meat and other products can carry it as well.
- sverige 7y agoWow, wait till you hear about unrefrigerated milk! https://newrepublic.com/article/119086/europes-unrefrigerated-uht-milk-could-help-save-environment https://newrepublic.com/article/119086/europes-unrefrigerate...
- mamon 7y agoLong shelf life might be desireable, but the UHT process has a really bad effect on taste. I prefer buying fresh, short expiration date milk.
- homero 7y agoI loved the milk but then again it was chocolate. Maybe plain tastes different. I know i despise powdered milk.
- dalyons 7y agoHaha it’s an awful lot better than powdered milk :)
- stOneskull 7y agocheck this out.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-01/fresh-milk-breakthrough-offers-60-day-fridge-shelf-life/11062284 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-01/fresh-milk-brea...
- r00fus 7y agoI grew to love the UHT milk in France. It does tastes a bit different, but has some upsides too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- petre 7y agoThe UHT process destroys milk proteins. I'd rather eat maturated cheese than drink UHT milk any day.
- Jerry2 7y agoIt's funny that if you tried to sell US eggs in the UK, they'd be illegal, and the UK eggs would be illegal in the US. But Japan has the best eggs and you can eat them raw or half-cooked without any fear of salmonella.
- TheRealPomax 7y agoThere are plenty of countries where you can eat the eggs raw. You just need eggs laid by chickens in a normal environment, rather than from the insanely messed up industrial chicken industry that some western countries have opted for.
- selestify 7y agoHow does industrial chicken rearing change the quality of the eggs such that it's no longer edible raw?
- bdamm 7y agoI'm assuming it's because the eggs end up quite dirty, therefore they must be washed, which removes the protective membrane. And perhaps the chickens are more prone to acquiring salmonella.
- petre 7y agoThey feed the chickens concentrates and keep them in locked up in "batteries". Some of them die there and they're not removed immediately. There are plenty of horrid videos on Youtube. Compare that to a soil growing chickens that scrape around for worms and eat grass, corn, wheat and leftovers from the kitchen. In fact that's the best part: you can feed them most most vegetable leftovers as long as they're fresh. Only the younger ones need to be fed some concentrates until they grow up because they're quite vulnerable to diseases carried by other birds, especially pigeons.
- benj111 7y ago"Some of them die there and they're not removed immediately" In the US I don't believe you have to remove the dead chickens before introducing a new generation of chickens to the shed.
- raldi 7y agoMods, please change this garbage clickbait headline to, "Eggs need to be refrigerated in the US because they come pre-washed."
- julianlam 7y agoIt's not clickbait, it's slightly editorialized, but nothing in it is false. The US refrigerates their eggs, and most of the world does not.
- raldi 7y agoIf this isn't clickbait, what would you consider an example of clickbait?
- nagVenkat 7y agoTop 207 reasons why US chills its eggs?
- srathi 7y agoNumber 4 will blow your mind!
- mysterypie 7y agoHow about: "Amazing thing the US does to your eggs that nobody else does"
- astura 7y agoFWIW I think the title is just fine.
- mysterypie 7y agoI don't see the original headline ("Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn't") as clickbaity. It states a simple fact and leaves me curious about why the rest of the world doesn't wash. Your suggested headline ("Eggs need to be refrigerated in the US because they come pre-washed) would have left me confused rather than curious. I'd be thinking: How is washing in any way relevant to refrigeration? It seems like a non sequitur.
- cmroanirgo 7y agoThanks for this post: I've always wondered why I don't have a problem with eating eggs from my backyard hens, even after a couple of weeks sitting on my benchtop, whereas the supermarkets always have them chilled (I'm in Oz). I never knew about the thin film layer on the outside!
- ergothus 7y agoHonest question: how do you clean your eggs? Chickens are not fastidious about where they poop.
- rags2riches 7y agoNow I'm curious. Do you know what a cloaca is and how it is related to eggs?
- benj111 7y agoAre you referring to the passing poo and eggs through the same hole? "When a hen lays an egg, her uterus turns inside out beyond the cloaca that the egg never touches the nasty stuff." https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/06/chicken-reproduction.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/06/chicken-reprod...
- rags2riches 7y agoI did not know that!
- ergothus 7y agoI do...my wife actually has some hens. I don't see how that contradicts my question at all. We end up with eggs that I am not eager to be handling/storing without washing, but apparently the rest of world manages this, so I am curious how.
- rags2riches 7y ago
- octocode 7y ago"In America, unrefrigerated eggs can KILL you and you WON'T BELIEVE the reason why." fixed
- systematical 7y agoOkay understood. But does refrigerating them make them last longer? I'm nomading through South America and of course the eggs were not refrigerated. Didn't worry me much, but I still put them in the refrigerator with the assumption that a cold dark environment will make the last longer. no?
- jartelt 7y agoIn the article it says "Another perk of consistent refrigeration is shelf life: It jumps from about 21 days to almost 50 days."
- systematical 7y agoThanks. I skimmed right past it I guess.
- dmh2000 7y agoit's funny how folks from different countries throw shade on the ones that treat their eggs differently, as if that is an indication of which country is better. Every few months a thread on Reddit gets this going. Nice to see an article that says that both approaches work about the same.
- oliwarner 7y agoDon't mistake it for blind nationalism. I think EU countries are proud that they can achieve desirable outcomes like long-life, safe-raw, unrefrigerated eggs, through desirable practices. The EU's production is over 40% free range, an increasing chunk organic and depending on where you are, a choice in breed. If those are the sorts of things that you care about, it is only right to "throw shade" on counties like the US, where 82%(!) of their layers are caged and you have to disinfect the eggs because of their awful conditions.
- tdeck 7y agoCrazy fact from the 19th century: if you store unwashed eggs in a slaked lime solution, they will last more than a year unrefrigerated: https://youtu.be/yUYgguMz1qI https://youtu.be/yUYgguMz1qI
- bjackman 7y agoTo this day in Chinese and related cuisines there is a technique for chemically preserving eggs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg They're quite odd!
- starbugs 7y agoEuropean (German) here. Though I've been traveling to the US a couple of times I've never realized the fact that eggs are washed and refrigerated there. Here in Germany eggs come with a best-before date and an additional date stating when you should put them in the refrigerator. Example for eggs bought in the second half of March: best before April 16 2019, chill from April 10 2019. I usually put eggs in the fridge once I got them from the grocery store, so they will last a bit longer. I've never run into any issues with this and it seems to be way less energy-intensive.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> We ... Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken eggs, so we bathe them and then have to refrigerate them. Not here in Norway we don't.
- eisa01 7y agoThey’re sold refrigerated in Norway, so I would assume most people keep them in the fridge at home?
- kwhitefoot 7y agoI just keep them on the counter in the kitchen.
- nemetroid 7y agoNo, that sounds inaccurate. Some stores do refrigerate them in Sweden, but they are certainly not washed. In addition, if any of your hens are found to have salmonella, the entire hen population is killed off: http://www.svenskaagg.se/?p=20022 http://www.svenskaagg.se/?p=20022
- mariefred 7y agoI have never seen eggs being refrigerated I don't know if eggs are washed or not in Sweden, but I have never seen an egg with poop on it
- tallanvor 7y agoI've never come across a supermarket in Oslo that doesn't refrigerate their eggs.
- drbytes 7y agoHave hens. We never put the eggs in the fridge. We leave them in the mudroom unrefridgerated until we need them, at which point the eggs het a rinse there before they go to the kitchen for immediate processing.
- Doubl 7y agoEurope vaccinates chickens, USA doesn't. USA chlorinates chicken meat, Europe doesn't. American chlorinated chicken is widely known about in Europe thanks to brexit
- antientropic 7y agoIt was actually already widely known thanks to the TTIP negotiations (see e.g. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ttip-fears/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ttip-fears/).
- vbuwivbiu 7y agovaccination vs refridgeration which uses less energy ?
- jeffrallen 7y agoBest quote: "a dirty egg with poop on it is no big deal. You brush it off when you get home"
- alkonaut 7y agoI heard it's not recommended to eat raw eggs in the US. Or perhaps part of the US. Is that a thing? E.g. do people avoid making mayonnaise?
- PaulBGD_ 7y agoI grew up being told that, due to "bad eggs" that could get you sick.
- jonathanp88 7y agoIn the UK there was a massive scare about Salmonella in eggs in the 80's, which resulted in many people believing it was unsafe to eat raw eggs. In reality the risk was tiny, and is now non-existent: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-41568998 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-41568998 The situation in the US may be different, though.
- trumbitta2 7y agoI buy them not refrigerated, and put them in the fridge at home because where I live "room temperature" can easily go as high as over 40C. South Sardinia, Italy.
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoInterestingly in France it depends on the shop. Some refrigerate, some not. Then everyone I know of them promptly in the fridge at home.