Comment by taneq
7 years ago
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?
> really shouldn't surprise you
It did surprise me very much since I don't know much about that field, and the article itself had a lot more curious/useful/new to me info like, quote, "We don't have massive [food safety] issues on either side of the Atlantic. Both methods seem to work" that expanded on the title. I hate clickbait as much as anyone else, but this didn't look like it.
The criteria for clickbait can't be "some people may already know this". Congrats for having all this knowledge before reading the article though.
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.
Surely 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.
4 replies →
What's even more amazing is that we address Salmonella by washing eggs rather than vaccinating hens. In many European countries, all laying hens are vaccinated, and you can make and eat raw eggs in all kinds of great things like chocolate mousse without worrying about Salmonella.
8 replies →
It's not the washing that does anything, it's the fridge - it keeps the salmonella from growing.
Other countries immunize their chickens. In the US only about half the chickens are immunized.
8 replies →
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.
This is similar to saying books titled "Why ML is successful for image processing" or "How to meditate in a busy world" (both examples presumably don't exist) are clickbait because they state the question they are answering without the answer. It seems almost irresponsible to boil down an answer as long-winded as that in this article into a few words.
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
This is interesting. Scandinavia is mentioned as another refrigerating part of the world, yet as a Swede, I don't think I've ever seen cold eggs in stores. On the other hand, virtually everyone I know buys room-temperature eggs, get home, and promptly put them in the fridge.
9 replies →
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"?
Perth here too, and Coles has a non-refridgerated aisle of eggs at the two Coles stores I usually shop at. I've always kept eggs in the fridge after buying them, though.
Now I'm intrigued how different stores / Woolies / Aldi handle this...
1 reply →
Just bought some from Coles.
But at Coles, they're not sold in refrigerated sections. At least the ones I've been to in Melbourne.
Bought free range eggs at Coles yesterday. I still put them in the fridge when I get home out of habit; not sure why now. :)
Edit: Found this article, probably inspired by TFA linked to story. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/should-you-refrigerate-eg...
6 replies →
Some Coles seem to have them in the fridge, though most seem to still be at room temperature. Same at Woolies I think (don't shop there much though)
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.