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'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.
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.
Chickens are vaccinated against salmonella (and a bunch of other things) when they are chicks in Europe. It means you don't need to worry about shitting yourself to death, the chickens are slightly happier by not being sick, and your eggs stay fresher for longer.
It would probably add $0.005 per egg, so US producers will claim it's communism if a regulation is brought in to vaccinate chicken, but it would be worth doing.
Fuckin finally. The tryna high road the Europe and shit like they don't have poor chicken treatment situations too. Its all down to vaccination requirements. They the treatment of chickens cause both places have issues lol
But eggs are yummy. Baked goods, thickened sauces, omelettes and deviled eggs and egg salad, you can't really replace them with vegan alternatives. Aquafaba is pretty close for some of it, but people like their eggs and don't care about how much their food suffers before we eat it.
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.
People in the US eat raw eggs all the time. Salmonella outbreaks from eggs are almost unheard of.
Also, washed or unwashed, eggs will keep longer in the fridge. And it makes for a less cluttered pantry. There's really zero reason for Europeans to be smug about this.
Yeah Ive lived in Europe and the US and raised chickens and have done it both ways. It's kinda nice having eggs that aren't covered in bird shit though.
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.
Likely not. There's some weird agricultural laws because of the great depression. You can mail raw vegetables through the USPS as long as they are addressed and have correct postage, for example.
Yeah it’s a surprisingly big trend here. And the people I know with chickens are suburban families. They are not on farms and they do not have a ton of other pets. Just a dog or cat.
This is because lead in fuel was legal until just a few decades ago. This means that for 70+ years, any houses near roads will have lead contamination in the soil.
This probably goes without saying to anyone who has chickens but a message to rest DO NOT WASH your eggs. It's the stupidest thing you can do. When you wash them you remove protective layer and they can't last long outside of refrigerator. Even in the fridge chances of getting Salmonella grows very fast.
Boiling them kills everything harmful. So no point in washing them then.
For anything containing raw egg, washing might not be enough.
Most EU restaurants and cafeterias have a UV sterilizer before storing or handling the eggs: https://www.hendi.eu/en/egg-sterilizer-30-eggs-220462.html
As someone who has been eating eggs out of our own production for several years now:
I've never washed an egg. Ever. When we get eggs from our hens, we mark them with the date and they go into the fridge. When we want to eat them, we take them out and do whatever is required.
We mainly consume eggs in boiled, fried and scrambled form, but also sometimes in a carbonara pasta, where they'll get heated but not cooked.
None of us have ever gotten sick from consuming those eggs, in whichever form. We don't consume eggs that are significantly older than one month, but that's pretty much our only safeguard.
Not Americans that are used to eating farm fresh eggs from the local farmers market. I lived in downtown Austin until recently and getting freshly picked produce from local and urban farms every Saturday was one of my favorite parts of my week.
Houston here, and same. There's a bunch of smaller ones. Some get invaded by folks selling store bought things but I dig heading to the farmer's market on weekends. All the meat I get is from small local farms as well.
Not everyone has that luxury due to cost and location. I know exactly how lucky I am to have so many options nearby, to be able to afford the slightly higher prices, and to have the time to go when they're open.
I grew up raising chickens among other animals. Poop and feathers on eggs was the norm. This ‘50s processed white bread, white sugar, clean eggs, etc. that was the sign of “progress” I guess IMO has done more harm than good in some ways.
But my fridge has a little spot just for the eggs. They look so cozy there. I actually don’t know where I’d keep something as fragile as eggs outside my fridge in the kitchen. Genuine question where do you keep your eggs safe? Do they often break?
It's not that those are valuable, it's that those are dangerous. Have you ever tried throwing one after getting it out of an egg safe where it was safely tucked away for the last decade?
I drop so much out of my cupboards resching for something else. I've dropped eggs before, and i would rather clean up a full sack of flour than half a dozen eggs.
Miss living near the Amish. They have these cute big families with so many children and agricultural stuff for low prices. I would love to convince them to somehow some way homestead in my city.
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
Can confirm. We (in US) have chickens and whenever we gift eggs to people they're astounded that they don't need to be refrigerated but also sometimes horrified that they aren't washed.
Granted, I keep the eggs that get poopy for myself so they don't get tossed out by an overly cautious person. I just rinse them immediately before use if they're very dirty. Occasionally one of the hens will have an "accident" and lay an egg in the dirt outside or on the coop floor. Otherwise they look generally like the pic above.
I've yet to have a rotten egg and at times we've gotten behind by over a month... Still good, sitting on the counter for a month.
Fun info, I'm currently eating through some "water glassed" eggs that I stored in May of 2023. Still good.
Hahah yeah water glassing is kind of a throwback that helps keep them even through temp variations. We did an experiment back when we had a homestead a few years ago, where we cleaned any nasties if there were any and then dipped the eggs in oil and kept them in a cool room.
We came back every three months to try an egg. We ended the experiment at 2 years after which 25% of them began to float. The rest were still edible but the yolk wouldn't stay together when cracked.
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.
The ones subsidizing the rest of the country. You think Cletus has health insurance while he cosplays as a farmer think his 600 dollar a month land tax is paying for his 4 kids in school? 9 out of 50 states pay federal taxes and those states all happen to have the biggest cities.
But hey I get it. My parents were cosplay farmers as well. Here I am working like a schmuck for a living.
Well, if you're buying them at a store in the US and storing at room temperature, your friend has a point. In Europe, they don't wash the eggs at the processing plant. This leaves a film of sorts on the egg that prevents bacteria from entering the egg. In the US, we wash the eggs in processing to get bacteria off the eggs. Both methods are done to prevent E-coli, but the caveat is the washed eggs need refrigeration because there is no film on the eggs.
What, a shitpost didn't take every singe person who exists in America into consideration??!?!?!?? No way, that's awful, I can't believe OP would try and hurt you like that, wild they posted a public meme that didn't apply to you personally
Also I believe you by your use of "chicken's". I grew up rural and many did not know how to pluralize things.
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.
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).
we raisekeep chickens. did the calculation a couple years ago (eggs/week / feed/week) and it was essentially break even, but I think the eggs are better (store bought eggs have super pale yolks). We feed them a mix of feed and kitchen scraps (trimmings of produce etc). Now its a good price from what I read in the news, but if you include labor, its probably not worth it or you would pay yourself next to nothing.
Hmm, this has me curious, I am in Australia at the moment, and the eggs here are unwashed and are kept outside of the fridge. However, they look as if they have been washed. Is there a special kind of rinse eggs go through here that doesn't remove the protective layer? Or are they doing something insane to the poor chooks to get eggs this clean? I rarely see any feathers, bits of muck, etc.
Googling around it seems that they are heat treated for salmonella before delivery but it is still technically recommended to keep them in the fridge longer term in Australia. Just doesn't matter if you use them in a week or so.
It doesn't scare us, we want this. I'd love to see you win vs the chicken industry. They would stomp your ass to the ground like they do to all the chickens!
Am American. Used to have to get those eggs out from under the chickens who wanted to sit on them and get the shit pecked out of me before school everyday.
Yeah I know it's tongue in cheek, but the mocking should really go the other way, haha. Look at our washed American eggs that scare the Europeans who are used to two orders of magnitude higher incidences of salmonella:
"Overall, egg contamination from industrial systems has been reported to be 0.005% in the United States, 0.37% in Europe, and between 0.5% and 5.6% in China"
That's not the number you're looking for with "industrial systems" they mean keeping hens in batteries and that's outlawed in the EU, has been since 2012 (though the actual phase-out took longer). So you're probably looking at maybe Serbian, Belorussian, and Albanian stats.
Overall the study you've cited is not the right one to look at as they're comparing different methods of keeping chickens, it's not focussed on hashing out regional differences much less the wash vs. don't wash issue.
Most of us don’t and many of us are skeeved out by this. I recognize that it’s stupid and these eggs are fine, but it still makes me feel gaggy looking at them.
Fresh eggs at room temp will stay good for 2 - 4 weeks at room temperature, 3-6 months refrigerated. If you need to refrigerate fresh eggs, you have too many chickens
Eggs don’t instantly degrade from good to bad overnight. They slowly degrade with weakening membranes and what not. As I said, they stay freshER.
I get unwashed eggs from a farm whenever I can. I still put my eggs in the fridge. And the yolks stay nice and unbroken when making eggs over easy, as I like them.
I don't have chickens I buy them unwashed at the store, use a certain amount of them in the next two or three days because I planned for them, and then all bets are off for the left-over eggs.
I'll get around to them eventually, never yet had to throw one away, but they keep longer in the fridge and they need a place to stay anyway so why not there.
Oh and once they near their expiry date hard-boil them, that easily adds another month.
Unwashed eggs are shelf stable, they last for a few weeks at room temp. Washed eggs, like you'd get at an American grocery store, absolutely need to be refrigerated.
In the old ages there were a number of ways of preserving eggs for long periods of time. Lard was one of them, where they would put many eggs in a pot and fill it with lard. There was also a way with mixing lime with water and keeping eggs in that. They could have been kept edible for years, although I don't wish to hazard the guess on how the produce tasted. Townsends has a great video on the subject.
I want my eggs washed because I deal with enough shit, literal and metaphorical, in my every day life, that I dont want to start my day off with it during breakfast.
Seems a bit dated - when was the last time you touched base with your Yank pals? Even in the cities now chicken cooping is extremely popular. Very common to have your own hens or have a work friend or neighbor hook you up with eggs from theirs these days. I think most people are now familiar with eggs that look like these.
I know right, why are we so uptight? Who wouldn't want their eggs covered in crusty vaginal residue and dirty feathers? THAT'S WHAT REALLY SEALS IN THE FLAVOR!!! 🤢🤢🤢🤮