As an American, I cannot legally touch any egg that hasn’t been ultra-pasteurized followed by continuous cold chain refrigeration and served in either a Styrofoam or pulped paper cardboard egg carton.
I think you have been misinformed. As an American, I can harvest eggs just like the pictured ones from my own backyard on a regular basis.
They don’t even cost any money, they come out of chicken asses for free.
You must have weird chickens. My lay eggs out if their cloaca.
What a noob. Ours come from shops. That way, our entire fuckin garden doesn’t smell like a crashed ammonia tanker
Let’s not pretend the acquisition and upkeep of chickens is free… if you eat a lot of eggs it is absolutely worth it, but there is some cost in setting up a coop, getting chickens, keeping chickens fed and safe from predators, disease, etc.
Plus you have to have property to keep them on and be allowed to have them on your property. For most Americans that isn’t possible due to lack of home ownership or HOA restrictions on what animals you can have on “your” property. (HOAs are bullshit)
This is pulped paper cardboard, is it not?
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Here’s a pic of some washed eggs in a refrigerator to scare the Europeans.
Bonus:
Microwaved water for tea.
What kind of monster stores bananas in the fridge?
Bananas in the US get washed and lose their protective coating so it’s fairly normal to see them in the fridge in US homes.
And tomatoes!!! Might as well eat ice cubes at that point
refrigerators keep things chilled, not frozen. you’re thinking of a freezer.
Those eggs look almost artificial. Bleugh.
They might be, food photography is weird
I also just grabbed a random ass image off a search; it might be AI generated for all I know!
can you imagine searching for something on google and it just ai generates images on the fly
Yo why are you keeping bananas in the fridge?
I’m pretty sure that’s a stock image so I don’t think that’s a pic of anyone’s legit fridge.
But to answer your question, you can keep bananas on the counter until they reach your preferred level of ripeness and then put them in the fridge to slow down the ripening process so you have a few more days to eat them before they turn to complete mush. I do it all time to ensure I always have bananas around at my preferred level of ripeness.
They brown more in the fridge. If anything cold speeds up the banana going gross.
Avocados work the way you say. I wouldn’t do it to a banana
Yes the outside goes brown, but the inside slows down it’s ripening process. Eventually they will all go to mush, but you can keep them at peak ripeness for a few days longer by putting them in the fridge.
Then again most people won’t eat a banana if it has a single brown spot on it, so I’m probably wasting my breath by telling people they can prevent food waste by eating discolored but perfectly ripe food.
The biggest reason eggs are refrigerated in the US is because they’re not vaccinated for salmonella, so refrigeration is needed to inhibit growth. The US was able to do that since they have the infrastructure for end to end refrigeration. It’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just another way to do it. Since salmonella can also be on the outside of the egg they need to be washed, and since they’re refrigerated the loss of the protective layer doesn’t matter. I guess in Europe with the vaccination it also lowers the chance of salmonella on the outside of the egg allowing the outside to remain unwashed and protective of the inside making refrigeration unnecessary. There’s just not enough of a reason to change things in the us now since the refrigeration method is already in place and switching would cost more up front. The main downside is that you can’t eat raw eggs in the US which means some dishes can’t be made, but the vast majority of the US isn’t interested in raw egg dishes anyways.
Imagine eating a bird’s menstrual discharge.
Imagine not knowing what mental discharge is and that chickens don’t menstruate.
Unfertilized egg is homologous to a mammal’s menstruation. Cope
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In the US, there’s a concern for salmonella or other bacteria and viruses. Factory egg farming is a horror show in regards to overcrowding and hygiene. Sick birds are crammed in with healthy laying birds, and washing the eggs is one of the safest ways to prevent contamination.
It does increase the permeability of the shell, decreasing shelf life and requiring refrigeration.
If your eggs looked like this in the USA, there’s a small but non-zero chance that you’ll shit yourself to death. Probably not, but it’s scary enough.
We could improve factory farming regulations so it’s not a like a Cronenberg movie, but then eggs would be more expensive. And even if we did, and stopped washing our eggs, Americans would still want them to look clean and would still keep them in the fridge because we’ve been conditioned to expect to die on the toilet covered in wet feces if we see bird poop on the eggs.
Fwiw, the eggs wouldn’t have to be more expensive, the eggs cost what the market will pay.
The only change is that the people profiting from your poor food conditions will profit slightly less.
This is a common lie they tell everyone.
Keeping unwashed eggs in the fridge at home helps them last longer, as long as you don’t leave them out to sweat.
But yeah here in Sweden, we rarely ever get salmonella recalls since the chickens aren’t strapped to a box here.
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Am american and this:
is what I have in my fridge right now. Rural living win.Wait, why fridge? I thought they last at room temp if they still have the chicken butt juice. Do they last longer cold?
Yeah I suppose I could store them at room temp, but I figure they last longer in the fridge and I’m not really hurting for space.
I still put farm fresh eggs in my fridge because it’s just a lot more convenient to store eggs in the fridge than on my counter where I have more limited space
I don’t get this at all. Isn’t your fridge much smaller than your counter space?
My fridge is designed to store food and has multiple shelves and drawers. My counters are a flat surface area and I’d rather keep them clear for active uses like cutting, prepping, etc.
There are also appliances competing for space on the counter like coffee machines
I guess there’s the pantry but it’s also just that I’m used to keeping them in the fridge and it’s not like it hurts them to go in the fridge.
Anyway, point is it’s really not that weird to keep them in the fridge
OP, that’s what it would’ve looked like. Your eggs been industrially washed. What a moron is that OP.
I don’t really know if there are laws about not selling eggs like this. Are there? I understood the practice of washing and sterilizing eggs came about as a marketting thing, b/c Americans tend to buy based on superficial appearance, and washed eggs sold better.
Is egg-washing mandated?
About 60 percent of the eggs sold in the United States come from processors who participate in USDA’s grading service, voluntarily paying to have their eggs graded so the eggs can display a “USDA Grade A” or “AA” shield on their cartons. The grade is based on qualities that can be observed in the shell, yolk, and egg white when the egg is inspected with lights and other specialized equipment. Specifics on egg-grading criteria can be found here.
Egg processors who participate are required to spray-wash their eggs with warm water and use a sanitizing rinse and air-drying techniques specified by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).
https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/how-we-store-our-eggs-and-why
FYI multiple studies have found that there is no safety benefit to washing. It just looks nicer, and people think it’s safer.
Thanks, that confirms my understanding, although I’m surprised the participation rate is as low as it is. That’s really interesting, thanks!
Yeah, as an American I’m surprised it’s only 60 percent. Pretty much anything I’ve ever seen available to me has been washed/graded/refrigerated. Maybe farmer’s markets? But no way do they have 40 percent market share. I’ve occasionally had friends with coops so I’m not unfamiliar with having shelf stable eggs, though.
At this point I think the thing that’d freak out Americans the most is the whole thing about not needing to refrigerate. It’s ingrained now.
One of the funniest food things I’ve seen was an interview with a French chef, who was talking about cheeses. I wish I could remembeg it well enough to quote him, but he was basically saying, in Europe, you don’t refrigerate cheese. Cheese has cultures, it is a living thing. Conversely, in America, cheese is dead, and we put it in the morgue, in little body bags.
Edit I found it! It was Clotaire Rapaille, and he’s a market researcher, not a chef. The quote came from a 2003 Frontline episode on advertising and marketing:
For example, if I know that in America the cheese is dead, which means is pasteurized, which means legally dead and scientifically dead, and we don’t want any cheese that is alive, then I have to put that up front. I have to say this cheese is safe, is pasteurized, is wrapped up in plastic. I know that plastic is a body bag. You can put it in the fridge. I know the fridge is the morgue; that’s where you put the dead bodies. And so once you know that, this is the way you market cheese in America.
I started working with a French company in America, and they were trying to sell French cheese to the Americans. And they didn’t understand, because in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that’s why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese. And when you buy young cheese for next week, you go home, [but] you never put the cheese in the refrigerator, because you don’t put your cat in the refrigerator. It’s the same; it’s alive. We are very afraid of getting sick with cheese. By the way, more French people die eating cheese than Americans die. But the priority is different; the logic of emotion is different. The French like the taste before safety. Americans want safety before the taste.
They probably think they grow out of the ground rather than come from an animal.
Yeah, there are no farms or individuals with chicken coops in the US, how could we possibly know where eggs come from?
/s (In case it wasn’t obvious)
Heads up, OP: these eggs have been industrially washed, sterilized, then someone took a feather and glued it on them. Look it up.
You ever wondered why you’d find at most one of them per box?
Basically, you’re as big of an idiot as your portrait of an American grocery shopper, but you’re also a naive hypocrite.
How do you know this? It’s actually illegal to wash eggs in many countries, for the reasons outlined in the post.
because if you’d ever seen unwashed eggs, you would immediately know.
My guy, I grew up on a chicken farm. This does not scare me.
Well obviously if you’re an actual chicken, it won’t. How was your cage growing up?
can confirm, am shook
I have a picture of my receipt for an incredibly reasonably-priced ECG scan I had the other day if you like? I think it was €9
DOES NOT COMPUTE
I know right?
I thought it’d be free fucksake
I know hardy har har such banter, but for real we also have unwashed eggs, and plenty of Americans have chicken’s, I currently have 80 in my backyard and am overflowing with eggs on my countertops.
Your jokes will hit harder if they come from a place of reality and not only information gained from reddit and social media posts.
I think that’s a fair point. However in this case, as an American I personally know people here who are like this.
A friend of mine will go to the store and buy more eggs because he refuses to eat the fresh eggs I keep on my counter.
Edit: He also keeps an ice chest in his trunk to keep them in during the 20 minute drive from the store…
There are Americans who own chickens and Americans who’ve never touched one. It’s a big country. This post applies mostly to city folk.
