Because 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.
It's a simple question with a simple answer, yet it sounds curious and draws you in. The answer really shouldn't surprise you at all. In fact, you could be forgiven for reading and coming out on the other side of your reading experience asking yourself "why did I read this again?". If that is not clickbait, then what is it?
So 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.
Bro, if you think this is click bait then you clearly never looked at buzz feed or listicle websites. Sure there is a simple answer but this is an article explaining the history of it not a quora question...
It's a headline which leads with a question but doesn't give the answer, forcing you to click on it. Is that not the definition of clickbait? I mean sure, it's not as egregious as BuzzFeed et. al. but it still meets the criteria.
We also are in the US and don't refrigerate. Because, we get a lot of our eggs from our neighbors, who have a dozen hens. Interestingly, my wife is from a farming background and never refrigerates the eggs, and I am from a city background (Canada, actually) and habitually refrigerate my eggs like I was taught to do as a child.
European (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.
Thanks 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!
When you have 6-20 hens the issue is a bit different from several hundreds. The nesting box tends to be pretty clean and you put in fresh hay to encourage them to lay the eggs there rather than some hidden part of the yard (a constant risk, and spoiled eggs smells similar to that of a decomposing animal except it seems to continues forever).
They don't tend to poop when laying eggs and usually leave the nest imminently when done, being quite loud and signaling to the rest of the troop. Collecting a newly laid egg becomes a bit of routine, and I get a feeling so is the laying of an egg by the hens.
Working with animals you also do get a bit more used to chicken poop and just deal with it if an egg here and there is not perfectly clean. I tend to wash those before using them in cooking. It is pretty fair trade for getting: "free" eggs, insect management in the garden, weed removal, and naturally enjoyment of having social animals.
Hens shit out of the same orifice that they lay eggs from. It is called the cloaca. I always imagined that the feculence on my eggs comes not from concerted manure dispersal over them, but from the remnants of past stools.
Not the original commenter but at my place we generally don't clean ours... and they are usually not soiled. Making sure we change out the straw in the nesting box regularly helps a lot.
I also crack the egg on a flat surface so the shell doesnt get pushed inwards.
I don't. I simply put the raw egg into a seperate container so I can see if the egg is bad but otherwise, as long as I'm not putting the whole shell into the food, I don't mind (it's not rare that I get eggs form the supermarket with poop and feathers stuck to it)
The eggs we get from our parents' hens we wash before we cook with them and keep them refrigerated along with chicken poo in cardboard egg boxes. Eggs from the store are already washed but we haven't fond any was good as the ones that we get from our parents' hens.
I eat eggs from my parents chickens for my whole live. Some of the eggs have dirt and shit on them, but I don't think I ever cleaned an egg before I opened it. I am still alive and healthy :)
Yeah we (Australia) are super inconsistent on this. The same brand eggs, in the same supermarket chain, in neighbouring suburbs, are stored differently. My local Coles they're refrigerated, the suburb over they're not. It makes no sense.
The advice warning people to cook them was from the 80s and was rescinded a couple of years ago, thanks in large part to he improvement in conditions and husbandry that the other posts in here are talking about. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41568998
I would also stress that the UK's production is now well over 50% free-range and organic. These concepts are still pretty alien to Japan. If you're only familiar with caged eggs, I would really suggest you get out there and try some other breeds on organic farms.
There 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.
So salmonella only occurs on factory farms? That’s a nonsense to suggest that. Backyard chickens seem to transmit salmonella at higher rates than factory chickens.
It's all about how they're farmed. Japanese take health and sanitation of chickens very seriously and they constantly do tests. Much more often than you'd see at US farms. US farmers depend on anti-bacterial washings of eggs and antibiotics in chicken feed as the primary defense against salmonella and other bacteria.
Since dishes made with raw eggs are so popular in Japan, they take all these precautions to the max. When I travel to Japan, I have zero worries when I crack a raw egg on top of my ramen, for example. Also, their omelettes are a lot runnier and taste different. I would never do that with US eggs. Also, their yolks are also much more orange/red in color. US eggs are mainly yellow in color.
it'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.
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.
I 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.
Coming 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.
One 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.
Totally 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.
IIRC 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.
Maybe you've never once noticed a spoiled one? I don't intend to suggest a practice that increases food waste but IME with both fresh room temp and refrigerated eggs: they start to smell like sulphur when they go bad and it's easily noticeable when they are not cold.
How does denaturing a protein release sulfur? I never actually thought of where that sulfur comes of, and I don't know enough bio/chem if that should be obvious from "denaturing of the protein".
I also really don't like the taste of UHT milk (called "H-Milch" in German). For me it's undrinkable. I can also taste the difference in a cappuccino. Interestingly, like the_mitshuiko already said, UHT milk is not very common in Austria but extremely common in Germany. When I'm in Germany, I have a hard time finding a coffee shop that doesn't serve coffee with UHT milk. It is basically impossible and to be honest, it says a lot about the German food culture. In Austria, not even McDonald's uses UHT milk in its McCafes but in Germany, even the most expensive coffee shop with coffees for 4 € and up cheap out on the milk.
It’s a preference thing. UHT milk is not very common in Austria for normal consumption but it accounts for almost all milk sales in Austria. I’m sure some recipes take this into account. I found some pastries that explicitly called out to use UHT milk.
I don’t think either has a better taste. Lots if people also love lactose free milk which has a completely different taste.
This 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).
If 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.
> (as once it's washed, you can't safely keep them at room temp anymore).
Yes you can. I'm in the US and I've been keeping my eggs on the counter for years now. They last for months and I have not had a single spoiled one except if it was cracked.
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.
Okay 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?
As 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?
Eggs 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.
Salmonella can contaminate both the outside of eggs through contact with environmental contamination, or inside the eggs from a hen colonized or infected with Salmonella.
I don't believe most US eggs are pasteurized; it will be clearly noted, and the texture upon opening will be different, if they are. My understanding is such eggs are somewhat safer for use in recipes requiring "raw" eggs, but there's still some risk.
(The specific US-style washing-then-refrigeration in this article is just one way of minimizing shell-to-inside contamination that's distinct from pasteurization.)
About half the eggs in the US come from chickens that have been immunized against salmonella. There's no easy way to tell, but you can call them and ask.
I’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.
UK Laboratory reports per 100,000 population - 23.82 in 2006, and generally decreasing, lowest 12.63 in 2014[1]. US average - 13.1 per 100k (range 11-15, depending on year)[2]. I suspect the difference is not eggs, or if it is it's negligible.
Salmonella comes from a variety of sources. I don't see how you can reach your egg conclusion based on overall rates.
Food:
Contaminated eggs, poultry, meat, unpasteurized milk or juice, cheese, contaminated raw fruits and vegetables (alfalfa sprouts, melons), spices, and nuts
Animals and their environment:
Particularly reptiles (snakes, turtles, lizards), amphibians (frogs), birds (baby chicks) and pet food and treats.
Quite a bit more data on the EU in this report from the EFSA [1]. Search for "salmonellosis".
In short, there's a lot more going on that just eggs.
One interesting factoid is that in Finland, the egg production chain has been virtually salmonella free for decades. Cases of salmonellosis are mostly contracted abroad, the most common source being tourist trips to Thailand.
Sorry, 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.
The _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
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.
Not 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.
I think a lot has to do with folks in the US being more OCD about cleaning their food. For example, most people in the US would never eat cheese that was crawling with visible mold and bacteria but the French prefer it that way (so I was told by a French friend. he said cheese must have 'the bugs')
I was about to say the same...but I also wonder what the breakdown is based on cause. Maybe in the US egg based cases are practically 0 and other things like salads are higher. Hard to tell just based on this number alone.
Europeans probably eat raw meat and eggs more often than Americans. Beef tartar isn't a dish that's commonly found on menus state-side. Is it even legal to serve a raw egg yolk in California?
I 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.
Because 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.
Is that really a clickbait headline? I mean sure it’s phrased as a question, but you can’t just put a whole lede as the headline.
It's a simple question with a simple answer, yet it sounds curious and draws you in. The answer really shouldn't surprise you at all. In fact, you could be forgiven for reading and coming out on the other side of your reading experience asking yourself "why did I read this again?". If that is not clickbait, then what is it?
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Also the article says the coating is scraped off, but then the eggs are sprayed with oil to make them non-porous again which I hadn’t heard before
From 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
So 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.
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Bro, if you think this is click bait then you clearly never looked at buzz feed or listicle websites. Sure there is a simple answer but this is an article explaining the history of it not a quora question...
It's a headline which leads with a question but doesn't give the answer, forcing you to click on it. Is that not the definition of clickbait? I mean sure, it's not as egregious as BuzzFeed et. al. but it still meets the criteria.
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The article delivers on the title. That's good enough for me
Can't we achieve same effect by just washing eggs before consumption?
I always wash the eggs I receive from farm under running water before I cook them into omelette.
I can't recall ever seeing refrigerated eggs in Australia. Where do you find them?
The refrigerator?
I left Australia 8 years ago but the 5 years living there, they were never refrigerated... never seen eggs in fridges :S
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Pretty sure they're in open-fronted cooled shelving or refrigerators in every supermarket I visit in Adelaide.
Where are you from? I'm in Perth, maybe we're different to "over east"?
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Just bought some from Coles.
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Woolworths. I believe Coles has them on a normal shelf.
I'm in the US and I don't refrigerate my eggs. I haven't in years. They last for months.
We also are in the US and don't refrigerate. Because, we get a lot of our eggs from our neighbors, who have a dozen hens. Interestingly, my wife is from a farming background and never refrigerates the eggs, and I am from a city background (Canada, actually) and habitually refrigerate my eggs like I was taught to do as a child.
European (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.
Thanks 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!
Honest question: how do you clean your eggs? Chickens are not fastidious about where they poop.
When you have 6-20 hens the issue is a bit different from several hundreds. The nesting box tends to be pretty clean and you put in fresh hay to encourage them to lay the eggs there rather than some hidden part of the yard (a constant risk, and spoiled eggs smells similar to that of a decomposing animal except it seems to continues forever).
They don't tend to poop when laying eggs and usually leave the nest imminently when done, being quite loud and signaling to the rest of the troop. Collecting a newly laid egg becomes a bit of routine, and I get a feeling so is the laying of an egg by the hens.
Working with animals you also do get a bit more used to chicken poop and just deal with it if an egg here and there is not perfectly clean. I tend to wash those before using them in cooking. It is pretty fair trade for getting: "free" eggs, insect management in the garden, weed removal, and naturally enjoyment of having social animals.
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They are not really dirty in a way that requires washing before storing. There sre at worst maybe small feathers sticking to it.
Then you can still wash them right before you use them, if you fear that something could get into the egg when you crack it.
Hens shit out of the same orifice that they lay eggs from. It is called the cloaca. I always imagined that the feculence on my eggs comes not from concerted manure dispersal over them, but from the remnants of past stools.
Now I'm curious. Do you know what a cloaca is and how it is related to eggs?
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Sounds like paranoia to clean them. Never heard of that.
How often and how much exactly is the outer shell touching your food?
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Not the original commenter but at my place we generally don't clean ours... and they are usually not soiled. Making sure we change out the straw in the nesting box regularly helps a lot.
I also crack the egg on a flat surface so the shell doesnt get pushed inwards.
I don't. I simply put the raw egg into a seperate container so I can see if the egg is bad but otherwise, as long as I'm not putting the whole shell into the food, I don't mind (it's not rare that I get eggs form the supermarket with poop and feathers stuck to it)
The eggs we get from our parents' hens we wash before we cook with them and keep them refrigerated along with chicken poo in cardboard egg boxes. Eggs from the store are already washed but we haven't fond any was good as the ones that we get from our parents' hens.
I eat eggs from my parents chickens for my whole live. Some of the eggs have dirt and shit on them, but I don't think I ever cleaned an egg before I opened it. I am still alive and healthy :)
My local supermarket — a Coles — doesn’t refrigerate their eggs. They’re on a steel shelf next to the bread.
I’m slightly curious about how this whole egg washing and storage system works.
Yeah we (Australia) are super inconsistent on this. The same brand eggs, in the same supermarket chain, in neighbouring suburbs, are stored differently. My local Coles they're refrigerated, the suburb over they're not. It makes no sense.
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It'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.
UK eggs are safe to eat raw.
The advice warning people to cook them was from the 80s and was rescinded a couple of years ago, thanks in large part to he improvement in conditions and husbandry that the other posts in here are talking about. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41568998
I would also stress that the UK's production is now well over 50% free-range and organic. These concepts are still pretty alien to Japan. If you're only familiar with caged eggs, I would really suggest you get out there and try some other breeds on organic farms.
I cant speak for US eggs, but UK eggs have been safe for decades [1].
This study [2] found salmonella in 13% of Japanese eggs, (although doesn't seem to be supported by [3]).
So I think you need to support your assertion.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-41568998
[2] https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijmicro/2013/463095/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3622169/
There 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.
You got this mixed up. The reason why you can eat Japanese eggs raw is because they're almost exclusively battery eggs.
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How does industrial chicken rearing change the quality of the eggs such that it's no longer edible raw?
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So salmonella only occurs on factory farms? That’s a nonsense to suggest that. Backyard chickens seem to transmit salmonella at higher rates than factory chickens.
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I'll bite: why does Japan have the best eggs?
It's all about how they're farmed. Japanese take health and sanitation of chickens very seriously and they constantly do tests. Much more often than you'd see at US farms. US farmers depend on anti-bacterial washings of eggs and antibiotics in chicken feed as the primary defense against salmonella and other bacteria.
Since dishes made with raw eggs are so popular in Japan, they take all these precautions to the max. When I travel to Japan, I have zero worries when I crack a raw egg on top of my ramen, for example. Also, their omelettes are a lot runnier and taste different. I would never do that with US eggs. Also, their yolks are also much more orange/red in color. US eggs are mainly yellow in color.
You can read more here: http://jlec-pr.jp/egg
I dunno, why does Japan seemingly have the best stuff all around?
In Japan you only get 4 for the price of a dozen, and I didn't really notice a difference.
it'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.
Don'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.
I 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_Showdow...
Coming 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.
3-5 weeks in the fridge and a year in the freezer [1].
[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-long-do-eggs-last
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I 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.
One 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.
I've always just done the float test, I don't know how reliable that is though.
Totally 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.
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IIRC 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.
Not reliable at all. It is reliable for freshness, but that only matters for some things like poached eggs.
Eggs last so long in the fridge I have never once experienced a spoiled one.
Maybe you've never once noticed a spoiled one? I don't intend to suggest a practice that increases food waste but IME with both fresh room temp and refrigerated eggs: they start to smell like sulphur when they go bad and it's easily noticeable when they are not cold.
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Doesn't overcooking produce the sulfur smell due to excessive denaturing of the protein?
How does denaturing a protein release sulfur? I never actually thought of where that sulfur comes of, and I don't know enough bio/chem if that should be obvious from "denaturing of the protein".
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The egg yolk is high sulfur. The egg white is high protein.
So I doubt that.
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Wow, wait till you hear about unrefrigerated milk!
https://newrepublic.com/article/119086/europes-unrefrigerate...
Long shelf life might be desireable, but the UHT process has a really bad effect on taste. I prefer buying fresh, short expiration date milk.
I also really don't like the taste of UHT milk (called "H-Milch" in German). For me it's undrinkable. I can also taste the difference in a cappuccino. Interestingly, like the_mitshuiko already said, UHT milk is not very common in Austria but extremely common in Germany. When I'm in Germany, I have a hard time finding a coffee shop that doesn't serve coffee with UHT milk. It is basically impossible and to be honest, it says a lot about the German food culture. In Austria, not even McDonald's uses UHT milk in its McCafes but in Germany, even the most expensive coffee shop with coffees for 4 € and up cheap out on the milk.
check this out..
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-01/fresh-milk-brea...
It’s a preference thing. UHT milk is not very common in Austria for normal consumption but it accounts for almost all milk sales in Austria. I’m sure some recipes take this into account. I found some pastries that explicitly called out to use UHT milk.
I don’t think either has a better taste. Lots if people also love lactose free milk which has a completely different taste.
The UHT process destroys milk proteins. I'd rather eat maturated cheese than drink UHT milk any day.
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I grew to love the UHT milk in France. It does tastes a bit different, but has some upsides too.
I loved the milk but then again it was chocolate. Maybe plain tastes different. I know i despise powdered milk.
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Crazy 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
To this day in Chinese and related cuisines there is a technique for chemically preserving eggs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
They're quite odd!
This 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).
If 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.
you can eat raw eggs
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Plus, you don't have to be homeless to not have a refrigerator. Plenty of people live under a roof, but without a refrigerator.
With that being said, I believe American eggs can still be safely kept at room temperature up to several weeks.
What if you hard boil? It's not like homeless people can go around cooking raw eggs on demand
> (as once it's washed, you can't safely keep them at room temp anymore).
Yes you can. I'm in the US and I've been keeping my eggs on the counter for years now. They last for months and I have not had a single spoiled one except if it was cracked.
Have 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.
I 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?
I grew up being told that, due to "bad eggs" that could get you sick.
In 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
The situation in the US may be different, though.
Okay 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?
In the article it says "Another perk of consistent refrigeration is shelf life: It jumps from about 21 days to almost 50 days."
Thanks. I skimmed right past it I guess.
As 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?
Eggs 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.
Pasteurized eggs are available. For example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Davidson-s-Safest-Choice-Large-AA...
You can buy pasteurized eggs, either in-shell or as liquid egg products, in the U.S.
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The risk is reduced with pasteurization.
Salmonella can contaminate both the outside of eggs through contact with environmental contamination, or inside the eggs from a hen colonized or infected with Salmonella.
Cook your eggs.
I don't believe most US eggs are pasteurized; it will be clearly noted, and the texture upon opening will be different, if they are. My understanding is such eggs are somewhat safer for use in recipes requiring "raw" eggs, but there's still some risk.
(The specific US-style washing-then-refrigeration in this article is just one way of minimizing shell-to-inside contamination that's distinct from pasteurization.)
About half the eggs in the US come from chickens that have been immunized against salmonella. There's no easy way to tell, but you can call them and ask.
I’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.
The presence of salmonella means the egg is real. It came from a bird's vaganus (cloaca) instead of being constructed by the likes of Cadbury.
Interestingly in France it depends on the shop. Some refrigerate, some not.
Then everyone I know of them promptly in the fridge at home.
> 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.
No, 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
I 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
They’re sold refrigerated in Norway, so I would assume most people keep them in the fridge at home?
I just keep them on the counter in the kitchen.
I've never come across a supermarket in Oslo that doesn't refrigerate their eggs.
Best quote: "a dirty egg with poop on it is no big deal. You brush it off when you get home"
Europe vaccinates chickens, USA doesn't. USA chlorinates chicken meat, Europe doesn't.
American chlorinated chicken is widely known about in Europe thanks to brexit
It was actually already widely known thanks to the TTIP negotiations (see e.g. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ttip-fears/).
vaccination vs refridgeration
which uses less energy ?
[2014]
Thanks!
EU average rate of Salmonella is 23 per 100k people, USA is 16 per 100k. So it appears the USA way works better.
UK Laboratory reports per 100,000 population - 23.82 in 2006, and generally decreasing, lowest 12.63 in 2014[1]. US average - 13.1 per 100k (range 11-15, depending on year)[2]. I suspect the difference is not eggs, or if it is it's negligible.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4689500/
Salmonella comes from a variety of sources. I don't see how you can reach your egg conclusion based on overall rates.
Food:
Contaminated eggs, poultry, meat, unpasteurized milk or juice, cheese, contaminated raw fruits and vegetables (alfalfa sprouts, melons), spices, and nuts
Animals and their environment:
Particularly reptiles (snakes, turtles, lizards), amphibians (frogs), birds (baby chicks) and pet food and treats.
https://www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/bacteriaviruses/...
Quite a bit more data on the EU in this report from the EFSA [1]. Search for "salmonellosis".
In short, there's a lot more going on that just eggs.
One interesting factoid is that in Finland, the egg production chain has been virtually salmonella free for decades. Cases of salmonellosis are mostly contracted abroad, the most common source being tourist trips to Thailand.
[1] https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...
Sorry, 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.
The _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-Salmonell...
* Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis
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.
Does salmonella go under-reported in the USA due to healthcare not being free at the point of use?
Not 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.
I think a lot has to do with folks in the US being more OCD about cleaning their food. For example, most people in the US would never eat cheese that was crawling with visible mold and bacteria but the French prefer it that way (so I was told by a French friend. he said cheese must have 'the bugs')
On mobile, I googled some papers, but it would be too annoying to go back and copy paste. You can confirm these pretty quick though.
To say nothing of factors other than the type of food consumed, there are many other foods beyond eggs that could give someone salmonella...
That seems like a pretty small difference…
I was about to say the same...but I also wonder what the breakdown is based on cause. Maybe in the US egg based cases are practically 0 and other things like salads are higher. Hard to tell just based on this number alone.
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~50% higher incidence is a small difference? In the US that would be an extra ~23,000 cases of salmonella.
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So it appears the USA way works better.
Does it? Both the UK and EU mandate that hens be vaccinated against salmonella. This step pretty much eliminated eggs as a carrier of salmonella.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/business/25vaccine.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-amundsen-egg-was...
Europeans probably eat raw meat and eggs more often than Americans. Beef tartar isn't a dish that's commonly found on menus state-side. Is it even legal to serve a raw egg yolk in California?
1- salmonella is not due to eggs only, but meat and vegetable also
2- you probably read in the article like all of us that chicken in Europe are vaccinated against salmonella, while this is not mandatory in the US
Therefore I am not sure how you reach this conclusion.
"In America, unrefrigerated eggs can KILL you and you WON'T BELIEVE the reason why."
fixed
Mods, please change this garbage clickbait headline to, "Eggs need to be refrigerated in the US because they come pre-washed."
I 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.
It'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.
If this isn't clickbait, what would you consider an example of clickbait?
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FWIW I think the title is just fine.