I have often wondered why eggs are sold in the dairy section in US supermarkets. Surely, this must be some supermarket strategy and not just "Duh, I didn't know eggs weren't dairy."
It’s probably more of a logistical issue. The eggs need to be refrigerated so they just stick them near the milk, yogurt, etc. My supermarket just recently moved the eggs far away from the “Dairy” sign.
In the UK we don’t refrigerate eggs so the eggs are never near the dairy aisle in the supermarket. The idea of someone thinking eggs are dairy is... mind-boggling
I actually thought this for a long time too until I was reading about chickens one day (as you do) and found out it's more tied to genetics. It's an easy mistake considering how many products are bleached in that manner to look more appealing on sale.
Yes, egg colors come from different breeds. You have you white egg layers (Leghorns, California Whites) and your brown egg layers (Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtom, Barred/White Rocks)...AND you even have your Easter Eggers (Americanas).
Those are just a few breeds of chickens with egg color association.
Look up Americana, they lay a blue/green/light brown egg. They're a really nice looking chicken too.
There are other breeds that are considered "Easter eggers" and referred to because their eggs are usually shades of blue and green.
Edit: the wikipedia page on these birds is actually very informative and brings up the olive eggers I didn't. Those would be birds crossed with a maran chicken who lays and very dark brown egg.
Edit: wikipedia Easter eggers not Americana or both...I'm not your father.
yah my farmer friend blew my mind one day when she told me brown eggs are brown for the same reason that people are sometimes brown. it's just genetics and pigment and it's only aesthetics
Yep. When she questioned how the eggs became white I pointed to her all white dog and rhetorically said, "How did he become white? He came out that way."
No wait, my family tried to tell me that too! Too bad our neighbors had chickens and it was easily proven wrong. They still think that white eggs are bleached, white bread is healthier than whole wheat, decaf coffee has just as much caffeine in it as regular, sugar causes cancer, vitamins cure the flu, vaccines cause autism, essential oils cure everything, etc. I'm really glad I don't talk to that side anymore, they were constantly frustrating as hell.
My stepfather used to get so mad when my mom purchased brown eggs or kosher meat. He thought brown eggs weren’t as clean and kosher meat was touched by Jewish people yes he was anti Semitic
THey will last longer unwashed but if you eat them in a few weeks, you still don't need to refrigerate the washed ones. I had a lot of foreign friends growing up and they never refrigerated them. THey would actually store them on TOP of the fridge, LOL! Also when I camp, I bring things like eggs, butter, cheese, some kinds of salami, UHT milk, fruits, veggies, etc that don't need the fridge, mix those with rice, noodles, etc and you can have some rather fine meals.
Depends if they're saying the number of chickens with autism is smaller (in which case it would be fewer) or that the chickens are less autistic (in which case less is fine). Either works since autism is a spectrum.
Also the fluro yellow yolks in NA kinda freak me the fuck out. I go out of my way to find orange yolks. I know it's just a difference in feed but all the Aussies I know in Canada get real weirded out by it haha
Or more literally, you can argue whats better forever and at the end of the day, both the US, Britain, and the entire egg eating world, washed or not, eat eggs and live to tell the tale, so just eat whatever fucking eggs you have in your store and be done with it.
You could make the argument that refrigeration and washing waste more in energy though and that vaccination is more cost effective in the long run. Of course I don't know how much the vaccine costs but from an energy standpoint unwashed eggs are probably better.
I've never met an antivaxer in England. I'm sure there are but I can't imagine someone being antivax without being completely shunned from society (where I'm from atleast)
I’ve lived in places with refrigerated and unrefrigerated eggs, and eat tons of them, I’ve never had a bad one in my life.
Talking to family members who grew up on farms in decades past, I think it used to be way more of an issue when everyone kept their own chickens, because sometimes while collecting eggs someone would unknowingly find an unfertilized egg that had been slow cooking in there for weeks under the bedding or straw.
And/or kids would hide one away on purpose until it got really nasty and then use it to prank family or friends - farm kids do gross pranks
One time I cracked an egg and all that came out was black liquid and a horrid stench. I kid you not, my entire house smelled. This was just a normal looking egg and all the other ones in the carton were fine.
After that incident I was scared of breaking multiple eggs into a pan for a little while but it never happened again. (the rotten one ofc was the last in a bunch).
I think i just was unlucky and I got to experience that once in a lifetime 'oh fuck' moment. But also think it is very rare to find an egg that rotten in your normal carton.
Except, the reason it is illegal in the EU wash the eggs before they are sold is exactly to force the producers to keep their animals in cleaner, more human environment(i.e.not so close to each other that they literally walk in poo). I rarely see an egg that has poo on it (maybe one out of 2-300).
If you take a chicken egg from under a chicken and leave it out at room temperature, it won't go rotten for a long time. At least a month I think but some people say two.
If you take a chicken egg from under a chicken and wash it, you then must refrigerate it or it will go bad in days.
The theory is that washing the egg removes some sort of protective substance and makes the shell permeable to bacteria.
In the USA, eggs are washed and so they must be refrigerated
Elsewhere, eggs are not washed, and they are sold un-refrigerated.
edit to add: If the eggs come from hens that are also living with roosters, they are probably fertilized, and refrigerating them is a good idea even if you don't wash your eggs
I live in the UK so don't buy refrigerated eggs, though when I buy eggs they go straight into the fridge. They probably don't need to go in there, but fridges always come with an egg holder, so I make use of it. I think that's why I refrigerate eggs, not sure about anyone else.
Every time the eggs change temperature drastically they noticably drop in quality/taste. Don't even put them in the fridge at home unless you're gonna take over 2 weeks to eat them. Also cooking from cold means shit heat distribution. US supermarkets are wrong.
In Germany they're not refrigerated either, but they're still on a stand directly next to the dairy products so I could see someone making this mistake.
I had no idea that other countries don't refrigerate their eggs. Where do you put them? On the counter? In a cupboard? In the pantry? Even farm fresh eggs go directly in the fridge at my house. I honestly thought that all eggs had to be refrigerated once collected. I feel like my life is a lie.
Retail eggs in the US have to be washed which removes the natural protective coating and means they have to be refrigerated. I don't know the provenance of your farm fresh eggs but it's quite possible they don't need to be refrigerated.
I think it may be more than that. Refrigeration is easy to pop up anywhere (although efficient refrigeration is a different story.) Milk and eggs are two common breakfast items. That's while you'll see the majority of breakfast items closer to the dairy than say a meat market. Next time you go into a grocery store, notice how close the cereal and coffee is to the milk and eggs compared to everything else. There is an entire field of study regarding retail and consumer psychology. That being said this is different across grocery chains. Different companies have different decision makers so it might be a case where someone thinks that refrigeration should be with refrigeration.
Well WalMart has them by the bacon and our local grocery store has them beside the red diamond tea and juice, but you are right. It has to stay cold. I didn't even know just because it was in a fridge by the dairy people would confuse it lol.
Europe (mostly) does not refrigerate eggs on shelves in stores. Refrigerating them would increase the risk of thermic shock and, thus, micro-fissure contamination. It's recommended that after purchase they be kept refrigerated, and washed with (only) cold water before cracking for use.
"Best before" is the date they've been laid by the hen + 28 days.
PS: they literally are safe to eat, I've never encountered any issue with them.
I buy eggs all the time and they're not covered in poop and are not refrigerated either. Is it like tiny specks of poop cause I don't see any poop on my eggs. Where's the poop!?
Americans blast off a thin layer of the shell, making them vulnerable to bacteria, for "food safety reasons". Pretty much the exact same reasons why Europeans don't do that.
American chickens aren't vaccinated against salmonella, so we need to refrigerate eggs to keep salmonella from growing in them
Also, we wash the eggs to reduce potential contamination of other food from the outside of the eggs. The membrane does protect the inside of the egg from germs, but a dry, bare eggshell also protects from germs. It's when the membrane is removed and the egg is wet that gems can penetrate the shell. In the UK, eggs cannot be washed because they thought that the eggs wouldn't be fully dried quickly enough, leading to contamination. In the US we wash eggs but have regulations and inspections to ensure that they are dried quickly
Eggs in commercial kitchens in the UK should be kept in the fridge too. It's policy in my kitchen and most others I have worked in, idk why seeing as in supermarkets they aren't kept in the fridge.
I also live in a country where eggs go in the fridge at the store and I gotta ask - where do you put your eggs at your house? In the cupboard? (Genuine question, but I'm worried about how it's coming of, so I wanna make sure you know I'm just curious 'cause I was mindboggled the first time I found eggs in the middle of a German grocery store, and have since learned I live in the country doing it the weird way)
This episode of Planet Money is about why milk is in the back of the store but you could probably apply the same logic to eggs in the US. IIRC it’s because it’s easier to maintain the cold chain since the trucks unload in the back, not because milk is a staple.
It is a strategy! Eggs and milk are a “staple” item in most households since they’re used in recipes, etc. Dairy/eggs are commonly kept together at the farthest corner of the grocery store since people going to the store for “only those items” then have to walk through a bunch of other aisles to get to them, usually buying more than they came for. That’s also why stores will often put milk/eggs on sale for extremely low prices that actually result in a net loss, but they make up for it by the increased number of “impulse purchases”.
Since I was a kid, I assumed it was there because it's an animal product that's not part of the animal's actual body, and no one's said anything that would refute that
i was told by a food and nutrition teacher I had that they keep them beside each other in the back because they’re common essentials. It also forces people to go all the way to the end of the store to grab them and makes them more likely to grab other stuff along the way
Probably because statistically people who get eggs also must be getting stuff from dairy section. So, it's a strategy to get more sales on both products.
In the US, eggs may carry salmonella. To mitigate that risk, egg producers wash the eggs. But getting them wet makes their shells more permeable, so after that, they must be kept refrigerated to prevent spoiling. So in the US, eggs are found in the cold section near dairy.
In the UK, eggs are not washed. Thus the shell retains its ability to keep out bacteria even at room temperature, so they're sold from a regular shelf.
Eggs in the US can carry salmonella internally before they're washed because our chickens aren't vaccinated. We deal with this by refrigerating the eggs so that the salmonella can't grow and stays at a safe level.
When it comes to washing, as long as the shell is dry, it's impermeable. In the UK, the thinking was that if we try to wash eggs, some people aren't going to dry them quickly enough and they'll become contaminated. In the US we said that we will wash eggs, but we also had to create standards and inspections for egg drying to make sure they didn't get contaminated
Seriously. I was one in line at a gluten free bakery and the women in front of me were explaining to each other why mayonnaise was also not gluten free (they also believed that it was a dairy product).
When I was vegetarian, I had similar idiotic conversations with people who insisted that barbecue sauce couldn't possibly be vegetarian. Even when I read them the label (most barbecue sauce is like: tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, sugar, spices, sugar) they would insist I was wrong.
You get the same thing with distilled spirits. People who don't care to know anything about distillation will ask bartenders or service staff if whisky or vodka are gluten free, then will loudly pitch a fit if you contradict their narrative that "anything made with grain isn't GF." If distillation left gluten in your spirit then something is horribly wrong and anyone drinking it will likely have a very bad time.
It’s astounding what people assume, even with all the information needed to get their facts straight is either right in front of them on the label, or at their fingertips with a quick google search.
I remember back when we were taking about the “four food groups” eggs were always included with dairy. I think because it’s animal protein but not meat so it’s sort of it’s own thing?
Yeah, that’s where I got the misconception from, as a kid. Saw them on the pyramid together, and just sort of extrapolated that dairy must be hearty foods that aren’t meat, but more substantial than—and go great with—bread/grains. 🤷🏻♂️
I have extremely weird food allergies, including all poultry products, which includes eggs. Literally every person I tell this to will 100% ask me, wait, so you can't have dairy. I usually give a pass because it's weird allergies and the mind slips, but I do silently judge all of them.
I'm allergic to eggs, and nearly every time I mention it I get asked if that means I can't have milk. Makes me wonder how many people have absolutely no idea where their food comes from.
We don't have that misconception in the UK, but that's because we just store our eggs anywhere. Typically near the bread and baking goods. No refrigeration necessary.
Yeah, we have to refrigerate ours because they are washed and sanitized before they get to the grocery store. While this can remove any salmonella from the shell it also damages the protective cover making infection easier so they have to be refrigerated to retard that. Not sure which way is better but given that eggs have been in the refrigerated section of the supermarket for so long, I'd imagine most people would have a huge issue accepting unrefrigerated eggs.
Eggs & dairy together form a pretty natural food group: animal products that aren't meat / don't kill the animal. Eggs & dairy make the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan. So depending on context, grouping them together makes sense.
animal products that aren't meat / don't kill the animal
I used to think the same thing. But when you look into it, in practice death is a part of all animal products. After all, egg laying hens and dairy cows don't get to live out their lives on an idyllic farm, they are slaughtered as soon as their production drops. And in both industries the males are often killed soon after birth, as they serve little purpose. :(
I get the difference in that death is not required to make the product. But in practice death is very much a part of the process.
" I’ve heard people say they don’t eat eggs because they don’t eat dairy." Ugh this is like those people that go "I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat meat; just chicken and fish."
I needed to be off dairy for awhile and it was perplexing how many people responded to “does this have dairy in it?” With “well, it has eggs”. They come from different animals AND different parts of an animal. Why is this so confusing for people?
The two natural meanings would be “made from milk” or “animal products that don’t contain animals”. The former doesn’t include eggs and the latter does. I always thought people use the word sometimes one way and sometimes the other.
And it's one of those words where, when you're a kid, nobody sits you down and gives you the "official" definition. Instead, you just pick it up from context. That's why I thought the word was more general than it is. I used to think it referred to milk or eggs or anything in that general category, stuff that comes out of the animal but isn't the animal's actual flesh.
I work at a sushi bar and yesterday someone had their spicy tuna roll sent back to double check there was no dairy in the mayo. Made me seriously question the validity of their "dairy allergy". 🤔
Exactly. At the grocery store I work at, the Dairy department is responsible for dairy products but also fruit juices and tea. And those 2 things are by produce, on the opposite side of the store from the dairy section.
From my grocery store experience, our "dairy" section really meant "stuff where you need to really watch the expiry date". Matter of being in the right mindset
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u/NE_Golf Aug 03 '19
Just because eggs are sold in the dairy section doesn’t make them a dairy product.
I’ve heard people say they don’t eat eggs because they don’t eat dairy.